


A Reluctant Heroine

by Myatsume



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Magical Boys, Magical Girls, Original Male Characters - Freeform, Romance, Snarky Animal Companion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-04-25 23:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14389446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myatsume/pseuds/Myatsume
Summary: Your schoolwork was hard enough, so why did the universe also decide to make you a magical girl with a jerk as an animal companion?





	1. Chapter 1

It almost felt like too soon when the first day of your second year of University began.  
  
You made sure to get up early so you wouldn’t be late, especially since you were going to meet your friend Aika before class.  
  
Grabbing some papers from your desk, you grimaced slightly at how messy it was. You were looking for a folder from last semester the day before and had ended up rifling through old stuff from high school, including a cringe-worthy drawing you had done of a magical girl when you were bored in class one day and had for some reason kept.  
  
Hearing your phone go off, you grabbed it and saw a notification from Aika, which turned out to be a picture of her outfit for the day, along with the message _Think Sho will notice me?_  
  
Sho Ueno. You sighed; Sho was Aika’s current obsession, and also had gone to the same high school as you, but you had never worked up the courage to even talk to him. Sho was pretty cute, with his brown eyes and his blonde hair which he had begun dyeing as soon as you had graduated high school. Even if you weren’t too nervous to talk to him, all of his many admirers were a good deterrent. Sure he was hot, but he wasn’t _fight every girl at your University_ level of hot.  
  
Quickly replying that her outfit looked fine, you turned to look at your own outfit in the mirror. Seeing no stains or rips, you nodded to yourself before checking your bag to make sure that you had everything ready to go for your classes that day.  
  
Your phone started buzzing again; Aika was no doubt spazzing about Sho some more, but you could reply to her in a bit.  
  
Heading out the door, you gave yourself plenty of time to get to the meeting spot. Though with a start, your time became constrained as you realized that you had forgotten your school ID back in your room.  
  
You rushed back into your house, taking the stairs two at a time. You had time, but not enough time to constantly be forgetting things!  
  
You opened the door to your room, immediately spotting your ID on your desk. Crossing the threshold into your room, your eyes were on your desk, but then suddenly they were set on the floor where you now laid.  
  
Why were you on the ground? You didn’t even remember falling over…  
  
You shook your head to try and free it from the weird feeling that had suddenly overtaken you, standing up slowly and finding it hard for some reason, feeling like your limbs were moving through water.  
  
You weren’t sure if your head fuzziness got better or worse when you looked back up at your desk, only to see some sort of weird animal sitting on it.  
  
“Uh…” You were dumbfounded. Did you pass out and this was some sort of weird fever dream?  
  
You weren’t even sure what it was. It looked like some sort of a cat, but its ears were too long to be a cat, and it had small fuzzy wings on its four paws. Also, the fact that it was purple helped to discourage you from the belief that this was some rare breed of cat.  
  
“You alright?” It asked, padding its way through the air until it was right in front of your face. “You’re going to have to calm down.”  
  
“What… what are you?”  
  
“How rude,” it huffed, “My name is Teru, and as for _what_ , I don’t think you could pronounce my species name.”  
  
Noting your lack of a reply, Teru continued on. “You can obviously see me, so that means I found the right person. Now I just need you to get you ready to go.”  
  
“Ready for what?” Your gaze drifted around as you began to notice what looked like sparkles in the air around you. “Why are there sparkles?”  
  
“Sparkles?” Teru looked around. “I guess they do look like that when you first see them, before you bond with them.”  
  
You sat down at your desk, eyes drifting to the various things on your desk in an attempt to block out all of the sudden weirdness.  
  
“Hey, don’t ignore me! We don’t have a lot of time!” Teru barked, floating over to you.  
  
You wearily looked over to him. “What do you mean _not a lot of time_?”  
  
“Well, obviously I’m not here just to say hi,” he replied. “There was a wave of dark power sent out a few moments ago, strong enough to awaken your dormant abilities. I think someone purposefully sent it out for some reason.” Looking stern, he continued. “I don’t know if they’re looking for a fight or not, but I can’t let you stay in this state; you have to transform. I can feel the dark power radiating still, and I think there may be some trouble in-”  
  
“Wait, what do you mean _transform_!?” you shouted, incredulous. “I’m not some magical girl!”  
  
“Well you might have to be. You’re going to have to deal with this negative energy, and it might help you to have a disguise if you want to do this without anybody recognizing you.”  
  
“How do I even do that? And I don’t want to fight anything! I want to meet my friend and go to school!”  
  
“Just concentrate, and call the… _sparkles_ … to you, and think of a form to take.”  
  
Absentmindedly, your eyes focused on the magical girl drawing on your desk. At once, you felt a sudden change, looking down to see a frilly, bow-ridden dress, your hair growing much longer and winding itself into the same long pigtails as the drawing in front of you.  
  
Springing up, you dashed to your mirror to look at yourself. Your dress was strapless, with a poofy skirt and arm cuffs which let out into long sleeves. On your legs you now wore long socks with knee-high boots, which also had bows on them.  
  
“Great,” you complained, “now all I’m missing is pink hair and cat ears.”  
  
As if to mock you, your long pigtails turned pink and a pair of white cat ears sprung upon your head.  
  
“…and now your form is finalized!” Teru announced. As he said that, you noticed that you could no longer see the sparkles in the air.  
  
“Wait… wait, I was kidding about the cat ears!” You grasped at them, shocked when you could feel through the ears when you touched them, slightly shocked at the ticklish sensation the ears gave you when touched.  
  
“They’re part of you, for now at least,” Teru affirmed. “Now let’s go!”  
  
“Wait, no! I can’t – how am I supposed to beat some scary monster? Why can’t you do it?” you demanded.  
  
Teru gave you a mockingly pitying look. “I’m a companion, I can use the sparkles, but my powers are limited, unlike yours,” he replied. “I do have enough power to do this however!”  
  
With that, a pair of wings not unlike those on Teru’s feet appeared on your back. Almost immediately, the wings took off, flying you out of your window, which you found was suddenly open, Teru flying right by your side.  
  
Ignoring your cries, Teru set his sights toward and area of black sky, very odd considering it was morning and everywhere else you looked the sky was a bright blue.  
  
“Please tell me we’re not going to the creepy black area!” you protested.  
  
Teru fixed you with an annoyed look. “How else are you going to beat whoever is doing this?” he huffed. “I would also prefer anyone else as my _chosen hero_ , but I’ve got you, so you’ll just have to suck it up.”  
  
Before you could really retort, you noticed you were pretty much at the dark area. With as much grace as they could, the wings on your back gently deposited you on the ground, disappearing immediately after and leaving you exposed in what you now recognized as a popular city square. There were people gathered around the edges, none willing to venture into the square but eyes eagerly directed at something in the sky.  
  
As you arrived, their eyes turned to you and Teru.  
  
“They’re staring at us…” you muttered nervously.  
  
“Not _us_ ,” Teru corrected. “ _You_. Normal people can’t see me.”  
  
“Oh great,” you replied, before realizing that the people gathered around were suddenly gone. In their place, a black wall, making you feel very caged in as you realized that all around you was black, dim light filtering in from the still-exposed black sky. You looked at the sky to try and figure out what the people had been staring at before, only to have your breath stolen from you as you were tugged backwards into a firm body.  
  
“What’s this? I got lucky this time, I thought I’d be stuck with Space Boy forever, but my effort has rewarded me with a cute little cat girl.”  
  
You whirled around, and your captor willingly let you leave his arms.  
  
Turning to face him, you took him back in. He was taller than you, with black hair that went to his collar and bright red eyes set in a handsome face. He also had black stripe marks on his cheeks and around his eyes that you weren’t sure what to make of.  
  
He wore a long black shirt with only one sleeve, the other arm covered in bracelets at his wrist, with one thick band at his bicep as well. He wore simple black pants that had slight tears to them and dark grey boots, a long blade strapped to one of his lower legs.  
  
“Enjoying yourself?” he teased, seemingly unopposed to you checking him out. “I see the kitty ears, but no tail for me to pull?”  
  
“They were an accident!” you sputtered, and the guy seemed pleased at both your reaction and the fact that he had gotten you to speak.  
  
He reached a hand out towards you, remaining casual even as you didn’t take his hand. “No? I thought it would make for a nice introduction. My name is Kain, and you would be…?”  
  
Eyes darting around, you awkwardly bit at your lip. “I don’t have some fancy superhero name,” you said, then realizing exactly what kind of situation you had found yourself in. “But that doesn’t matter! Stop what you’re doing here!”  
  
“But why would I stop? It brought you here, and if I sent the darkness away, it would cut my time with you short, _Cattail_.”  
  
“Don’t call me that!” you replied angrily. “Stop this or I’ll make you stop it!” You really weren’t sure where this sudden confidence was coming from, but you were just gonna run with it.  
  
“Oh? How would that be? Your little pet hasn’t even taught you how to call your weapon,” he taunted, eyeing Teru, who glared at him. “Now, if _he_ would just stay out of this, I’ve got a pretty girl to corrupt.”  
  
“Kain!!” A male shout came from somewhere behind you, Kain rolling his eyes in response.  
  
Kain passed by you, floating to the middle of the square to meet this new intruder.  
  
Rushing into the square was a tall boy with messily spiked blonde hair and bright blue eyes. _Everyone had fancy colored eyes_ , you grumpily noted, wishing that you had thought of that.  
  
Turning your focus back to the blonde boy, you noticed he had a bright blue vest with a short white undershirt to cover his chest. He had white bracers on his arms and blue pants with white boots to cover his lower legs. As he moved, you could see the long white cape he wore flow behind him, the underside of which was a dark blue that seemed to sparkle with what looked like outer space on it.  
  
“Space Boy, you made it after all,” Kain mused.  
  
“It’s Orion! And you know it’s a constellation!” the boy yelled back, pulling his long sleeve back to press on a bracelet on his wrist, a dazzling sword with a translucent white blade appearing in his hand.  
  
Not doing any weapon-summoning of his own, Kain fixed Orion with an unimpressed look. “I was hoping my monsters would keep you busy long enough that I could enjoy my new discovery.” With that, he turned his gaze to you as you were furiously whispering with Teru, and in turn you drew the blonde’s gaze as well.  
  
He drew back a bit at the sight of you, and despite the fact that you knew how embarrassing you looked, you couldn’t help but feel a bit offended.  
  
At Orion’s tense expression, Kain rolled his eyes yet again. “Relax, blondie! She’s not on my side. Not yet, anyways,” he finished, his eyes back on you for a moment, offering you a teasing smile before returning his attention to Orion. “Now, if you insist.” With that, he reached down and grabbed the blade at his lower leg, which extended into a long, slender black sword that exuded the same darkness as you were currently caged in by.  
  
There barely passed a moment before the two shot at each other, blades clashing.  
  
“Teru, who are these people and what’s going on? I was expecting to fight monsters, not guys with magic swords!”  
  
“Well I never said you were the only one with this power, but evil guy over there was obviously visited by a less than reputable companion to turn out this way,” he replied.  
  
“And the blonde guy?” You couldn’t bring yourself to refer to him as Orion. _What kind of a name is that anyways?_ “Why do you need me when you’ve got him?” you pressed.  
  
“I told you, I am _your_ guardian companion! I can’t sense others unless they use their powers, so as far as I knew, you were the only hope I had!” Teru argued back. “And do you really want to leave this Kain guy to _him_?”  
  
You looked back over at the fight; Kain was definitely on the attack, Orion defending the blows to the best of his ability, but he looked like he was struggling.  
  
“Well? Get in there!” Teru advised. “Summon your weapon!”  
  
“I don’t know how!” you replied, frustrated.  
  
“Just like your outfit, concentrate on it and it will appear!” Teru asserted.  
  
Furrowing your brows in disbelief that you were actually doing this, you did as you were told and concentrated.  
  
“Please, give me a weapon that isn’t too embarrassing…” you pleaded, holding out a hand to hopefully receive your own sword, even if the idea of using a sword made you nervous.  
  
Unfortunately, you were let down yet again by the sparkles, as in your hand you gripped not a sword, but a long, pink staff that definitely fit the description of _embarrassing_.  
  
It was hot pink, with a ball decorated with a heart pattern at the bottom end, and a large winged heart at the top of the staff, a large red heart-shaped jewel embedded in the center of the bigger heart.  
  
You turned to Teru. “What am I supposed to do, whack someone in the head? I can’t fight a sword with _this_!”  
  
“The type of weapon doesn’t matter,” Teru retorted. “Look closer. The weapons they fight with channel the, uh, sparkles; that is what they really fight with.”  
  
Looking closer at the fight between the boys, you noticed the sparks of dark and light clashing just as their swords clashed.  
  
“Well, can I just send a blast of sparkles at him?” At Teru’s nod and imploring look, you set you focus back on Kain.  
  
Mentally imagining drawing all of the sparkles into your staff, you swung your staff in an arc towards the fight, letting out a cry as a ball of sparkly light shot out of your staff and straight at Kain. You watched as the ball soared at him and straight through a barrier that surrounded him that became visible at the same time that it shattered and the light hit Kain head on.  
  
Kain’s scream of pain was all that you could hear and you watched as he fell to the ground, Orion still in the air, staring dumbfounded at the prone Kain before his gaze turned to you as you were huffing with the exertion of summoning the sparkle ball.  
  
Before you had a chance to wonder if you had killed Kain with your newfound sparkle magic, he staggered to his feet, wiping a trail of blood that came from his mouth with his sleeve. Fixing you with a stare that you thought looked too amused to direct at someone who had just attacked him, he raised a hand.  
  
“I underestimated you, Cattail,” he teased. “I won’t make that mistake again. But the point of this was to meet you, so I’ve achieved my goal for today. Next time, kitten.”  
  
And with that, he turned his wrist as if opening a door, and very suddenly a black portal opened up, swallowing him as he walked inside before disappearing into thin air.  
  
Orion wasted no time after that in making his way to you, now standing around five feet away. “Uh, I… thanks for your help!” He surprised you with a deep bow, reigniting your earlier awkwardness.  
  
“It’s no problem,” you replied awkwardly, shifting your feet, until you realized that the blackness surrounding the square was lifting, revealing the very interested public, who were eagerly awaiting the sight of you, fingers pointing and voices excited.  
  
“Um, Teru?” you called out. “We need to get out of here.”  
  
“No problem!” Teru nodded, swatting a paw as he opened a white portal that was very similar to the one Kain had just left in.  
  
“You can do that too? Why didn’t you do that earlier instead of the wings?” you demanded.  
  
“Light portals can only be entered willingly, and I didn’t think you were willing earlier,” Teru smoothly replied.  
  
“Well, let’s go!” you insisted.  
  
“Wait!” Blondie called out. “I’ve never run into another good person with abilities; we should keep in contact in case of future danger!”  
  
The boy’s forwardness surprised you, and seemed a bit out of character for him until you noticed the blush on his cheeks.  
  
Noticing your hesitance, he clarified himself. “You don’t have to tell me who you really are, but if you… you’d give me your phone number, I can contact you if there’s trouble.”  
  
You weren’t sure what to do, but the impending reporters you saw quickly making their way over to you, snapping far away pictures made your decision hastier as you quickly rattled off your phone number before jumping through the portal.  
  
Feeling light as a feather for a second, you found yourself back in your room, still looking like a magical girl.  
  
Slumping on the bed, you realized your phone was buzzing with a text notification. Grabbing your phone, you saw a bunch of texts from Aika, ranging from worry to confusion to an update that they had cancelled school that day due to another appearance of Kain.  
  
Was Kain a thing before this? You had never heard of him… You texted Aika back, asking who Kain was, and about a minute later your phone started ringing.  
  
“Do you not watch T.V. or use the internet? How have you not heard of Kain?” Aika demanded.  
  
Not waiting for a response from you, she continued on. “About a month ago, he appeared, and Orion appeared at the same time to save everyone! I mean, Sho is still my favorite, but Orion and Kain are pretty dreamy as well…”  
  
“Aika!”  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” she dismissed. “Anyways, where were you? I waited forever at the meeting spot!”  
  
“I… uh… I kinda lost track of time, sorry,” you apologized. “I’ll treat you next time we go to the café!”  
  
“Ooh, fine, I forgive you!” she replied. “You know that means we’re going this weekend, right?”  
  
After agreeing to Aika’s plan, she finally let you go with a promise to meet up before school tomorrow instead.  
  
Hanging up, you sighed. Looking in the mirror, you were still in disbelief.  
  
“Just send the sparkles away and you’ll go back to normal,” Teru interrupted your thoughts.  
  
Asking the sparkles to go away, you felt your form go back to normal.  
  
Your phone buzzed yet again, and looking at the time you were surprised to see that it was already late afternoon. Did time go faster inside that shadow zone or something?  
  
Dismissing the thought for now, you looked at the notification to see a text from an unknown number.  
  
_Thought you should have my number too. You can call me Hiro._


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, you woke up nervous. What if there was another attack? You really didn’t want to be that weirdo who was always missing class for unspecified reasons!

Luckily for you, your walk to meet Aika at school was uneventful. Well, mostly.

“Can’t you just stay home or go back to where you came from?” you hissed to the flying purple cat-thing by your side.

“We don’t know when trouble will strike next, and I don’t trust you to go in on your own!” Teru replied.

Huffing, you quickly shut up as you saw Aika running over to you, not wanting her to think that you were talking to yourself.

“Hey, did you hear?” Was the first thing she said to you.

“Hear what?” Aika always had some sort of gossip for you first thing in the morning; you weren’t sure how she managed to get all her information as she was usually pretty well informed.

“There’s a new superhero, but it’s a girl this time!” she explained.

“…oh.” You tried to keep your facial expression neutral. Aika, who didn’t notice your facial issues, pressed on.

“Yeah! We don’t know what her superhero name is since she disappeared and the area got all blocked off, but it seems like she fought off Kain with Orion!” Aika was practically squealing with excitement at this point.

Looking around out of the corner of your eye, you noticed that Aika’s loud voice was starting to draw gazes from around you, as usual. Only this time you didn’t want people looking at you while Aika was talking about this mysterious new magical girl.

“Aika, we’re going to be late to class if you keep this up!” you chastised her.

Aika reluctantly acquiesced, and the two of you walked through the school gates and towards your first class.

Walking a bit ahead of Aika, you opened a door to stairway leading up to your classroom, only to fall back and onto the floor.

“Are you alright?”

You looked up maybe a bit too fast to see a tall boy with dark hair and brown eyes staring down at you and awkwardly offering you a hand to get back up.

“What’s the hold up, Mitsu?” A voice rang out from the stairway door that had just reopened behind the boy.

“Ooh, Mitsu’s playing Prince Charming!”

You looked behind him to see a small group of guys who you assumed to be the guy’s friends, who were going all in on teasing him.

The guy’s extended hand retreated from your direction at the teasing from his friends. At the same time, you felt a hand on your upper arm helping pull you up.

“These guys are weird, wanna get out of here?” Aika’s voice whispered from next to you. At your nod, you both moved past the guys and began to climb the stairs to your class.

“What was that? I mean the tall guy was awkward enough, but his friends seem like jerks!” Aika vented to you.

“Yeah, I feel a bit bad for him,” you agreed. “Have you seen him before? I don’t think I have.”

Aika thought about it for a second, humming out loud. “Maybe? I mean you’d think I’d remember such a loud group of guys but I can’t remember if I’ve seen them before.”

Your chatter stopped abruptly as you entered the classroom only to realize that class had just started and you were technically a minute late, and the professor was fairly strict, so you two quickly separated to get to your seats so the professor wouldn’t be as mad at you.

 

 

A boring half hour later, you stood up to go to the bathroom, walking out and trying to make the least amount of noise so your professor wouldn’t call you out.

Passing down the hallway, you noticed a sudden increase in volume of those around you. Was there some sort of school event going on or something?

“You might want to look outside…” Teru’s voice rang out from beside you. When had he appeared? And on that subject, when had he disappeared from your side.

“Where did you–”

“No time, (Name). Look outside!” Teru insisted, and you turned your head to the windows adorning the hallway you were currently walking down.

“What… what is _that_?”

You could simply describe what was outside as a giant snake, but that really did no justice to the many arms that stuck out from its long body, adorned with what looked like sharp claws. It had blood red eyes and horns of the same color sprouting from its forehead. It didn’t look like anything that you had ever seen before, even in movies.

“Is that Sho?”

“Oh my god it’s got Sho!”

Your brows furrowed at the sudden cries around you. You didn’t see any–

Looking at where the girls around you were pointing, you noticed a figure in the snake’s grasp on one of its lower arms. You could make out the blond hair, but not much beyond that, although not many other guys had dyed blonde hair at your school so it was most likely Sho.

Lost in your thoughts, Teru had to smack your cheek to bring you back into reality. “Did you forget that it’s _your_ job to deal with stuff like this?”

Grimacing, you huffed, eyes shifting between the monster outside and the floor at your feet. Reluctantly, you made your way to the stairs that led outside. Looking around, you made sure that nobody was near you before speaking up to Teru.

“I can’t do this! What if last time was just a fluke? I _really_ don’t want to be eaten by a giant horned snake thing!” You were starting to panic a bit at the thought of having to fight again.

“It’s fine! I know you’re not great at this, but I won’t let anything happen to you!” Teru retorted confidently.

“You say that, but–” You tried to protest, before noticing that Teru had already summoned the sparkles to surround you and they quickly transformed you into your magical girl form.

“Well now you look the part, so would you rather get out there or hide here until someone comes by and wonders why the new hero girl is cowering in a stairway?”

Growling under your breath at Teru, you reluctantly made your way to the door, sighing as you opened the door, hoping that Teru would keep his promise and keep you from being eaten by the giant snake.

Scoping the situation out from around a corner of the school building, you noticed something that had escaped your sight beforehand. Hovering in the air beside the snake was Kain, who laid a hand on the snake’s head as he looked down at Sho, who was struggling in vain to escape the creature’s grasp.

You almost jumped out of your skin when a hand was laid on your shoulder.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” A male voice rang out from behind you and you whirled around to see Orion standing behind you. _Great, now you were going to get a lecture from him about hiding too_.

“I see he’s got Sho– uh, that student. I can distract Kain if you want to try and get him to safety.”

Orion’s calm planning helped you calm down a bit as well. You probably shouldn’t just sit by while Kain was actively trying to harm others. Nodding your approval of his plan, you watched as Orion dashed out first, calling Kain’s name angrily.

The two began to banter, and eventually Orion instigated a fight with Kain, but the unfortunate consequence of this was that the serpent, while it stayed in place, began to move its head to try and catch Orion in its sharp teeth.

Steeling your nerves, you crept out of your hiding place, trying to make your way to where Sho was being held captive. Constantly glancing up to the fight as you made your way over, you were finally close enough to the weird snake thing, although Sho was held in its talons around ten feet up from the ground.

“I got this!” Teru exclaimed, and the wings from before appeared on your back, lifting you up to Sho’s height.

Quickly putting a finger to your lips, Sho silenced both his cries and his struggling to look at you. Trying to put on a smile that you felt probably looked really awkward, you tried to mentally call for the sparkles to free Sho.

“You can’t just hope it’ll do the work for you. Visualize what you want and then send the power out to do it,” Teru advised you, also keeping watch on the fight above you between the two boys and a snake.

You tried again, focusing any power you could muster into your hand, and then pressing the hand to the base of the arm holding Sho. With a scream from the creature and a flash of light, the arm fell off of the creature and Sho was free. Before he could fall to the ground, you caught him, surprised that you could actually manage his weight. Without waiting, Teru sent the wings to fly you and Sho to safety, far away from the creature, who had by now drawn attention to itself with its cry.

Looking back, you noticed that Kain had noticed you, and was focusing intently on you, at least until Orion came at him with his sword, drawing his focus back to the fight.

The wings landed you up on the roof of the school, which was deserted. Sho quickly got to his feet, steadying you as well with his hands on your inner elbows. Now that you were out of immediate danger, the close proximity to Sho was making you embarrassed.

“Um, you should get to safety.” That seemed like a superhero thing to say, right…? This was only your second day on the job, but the last thing you wanted to do was embarrass yourself in front of the school idol, even if he didn’t know who you really were.

“Thanks for saving me.” You almost didn’t realize that Sho had said anything, but he was looking at you with a smile on his face, sending your nerves into overdrive.

“Uh, no problem, Sho…” You spoke without really thinking about what you were saying.

His eyes widened a bit. “You know my name?”

Your face froze up, gaining a panicked look. “Um, gotta go!” And with that you let the wings on your back take over and fly you back into the action.

“Smooth,” Teru commented.

“Shut up!” you countered, figuring you should probably summon your staff by now, and with merely a thought of it, you found that it appeared in your grasp, much to your surprise.

“We should probably take that snake out and give Orion some breathing room,” Teru asserted. “Think you can conjure up another blast like last time?”

“I can try…” You replied, not feeling as if it would go that well, but worth a try. You called with everything you had to force as many sparkles as you could into your staff, swinging it like a baseball bat and then sending another ball of power towards the center of the snake monster.

Half expecting the ball to just fizzle out and die, you found yourself surprised to see a big hole blown through the center of the monster, right on target. The monster froze, and began to slowly crumble into what looked like black smoke and fade away.

You tried to look up to the fight between Kain and Orion, but found yourself exhausted at the second expenditure of your powers within a short period of time.

“I missed you, Cattail.”

You didn’t even have enough power to dodge Kain’s grasp as he caught you when you fell towards the ground in your total exhaustion.

Looking up at him from your position in his arms, you tried to glare at him, as weak as that ended up being.

“Such an angry look for a cute girl. You even killed my precious snake. I can’t let this keep happening, but I’m less mad if it’s you that defeats me,” Kain purred, stroking your hair as you tried to squirm from his grasp.

Suddenly Kain jumped a great distance, the wind ruffling your hair as you noticed a panting Orion in the place where you had just been. As Orion prepped to attack again, Kain set you gently to your feet before striding forward. His head turned back only slightly to face you. “You used too much power, Princess. Stay to the sidelines, I don’t want to hurt you.”

And with that, Kain and Orion were back at each other. Finally taking a chance to look at your surroundings, you noticed a large crowd surrounding the area, and this time there was no darkness to block their perfect view of the three of you.

“Um… Teru, what do we do? Everyone is staring…” On further glance, you noticed that every window in the school building had people glued to the scene below. Swallowing nervously, you saw Aika pressed to the window of your classroom. You were definitely going to hear about this later.

“I would say we should help, but you’re definitely in no condition to do anything,” Teru replied. “But there’s one thing we could try, but it’ll take both of us.”

Teru explained the plan to you, with you agreeing reluctantly, not really wanting to get any closer to Kain and his weird flirting.

Sighing, you stepped back out into view. Weakly dragging your body, you found yourself in the middle of a fight, Teru stealthily gripping onto the back of your dress. You dropped down to your hands and knees, part genuine weakness but also significant part strategy.

You made sure to fall closer to Kain than Orion, and you did not go by his notice. Kain couldn’t help himself, sauntering over to you. “Didn’t I warn–”

“Teru!” you called out, and your furry friend immediately went into action, crawling from your back to your shoulder and reaching a paw out to Kain.

“What–” Was all Kain got out before a large pair of wings sprouted on his back, quickly going into action and rocketing him high into the sky with no signs of stopping.

You sighed with relief, fully collapsing onto the ground, barely holding onto your consciousness at this point. You felt your energy draining away, until you felt nothing.

 

Blearily, you opened your eyes, noticing that you were in your room. Relief flooded through you, only to be replaced by surprise as you heard a snoring sound that you knew was definitely not coming from you. Looking beside you, you saw Teru fast asleep on your other pillow. _Guess he tired himself out too_ , you figured.

 Still not feeling fully rested, you closed your eyes, laying your head back down on the pillow and falling back asleep. In your tiredness, you somehow managed to miss the blonde magical boy passed out on the floor of your room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For some reason I like to start chapters with waking up and end them with text messages xD

Eyes blinking open, you sat up in bed and stretched, feeling well rested.

“About time you got up, you’ve got mail.”

“What?” you replied sleepily, looking over as Teru flew over to you, a piece of your notebook paper in his paws.

Taking the paper, you looked down to see an unfamiliar scrawl hastily written across the paper.

_I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to see your face. I won’t tell anyone, I promise._

_-Orion_

Your brows furrowed. When did Orion come by, and how did he know where you lived??

“Don’t look so dumb. I guess you didn’t notice, but Orion came with us through our escape portal and passed out on the floor. He woke up and left about an hour ago.”

“What? Why didn’t you wake me up?” you questioned Teru. “And wait, does this mean he knows my secret identity?”

“Well, obviously,” Teru replied, crossing his front paws.

You put your face in your hands, how could this get any worse? At least he was a fellow superhero, and he said that he wouldn’t tell anyone who you were, but it seemed kind of unfair that he knew who you were when you had no clue who he was.

“…wait,” you realized. “You said he left an hour ago, that means you know who he is!”

“…and?” Teru dragged out.

“So tell me who he is!” you demanded.

Teru looked to the side for a moment before turning back to you. “No.”

“Why not?” you implored him, frustrated.

Teru’s smug face faded for only a second as you swiped a hand to try and smack him, before returning full force and smirking at you. “It’s more fun if you don’t know.”

With that, Teru disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke right as your hand passed through where he was floating. Crying out in frustration at the annoying animal, you decided that you had better get up for the day.

“Of course he disappears the only time I actually want to talk to him.”

 

 

It had been a few days since the two attacks that were a day apart, and you couldn’t help but look over your shoulder constantly, fearful of having to fight more weird monsters.

“Sooo, about that café visit…” Aika trailed off, leaning in closer to you as you were walking home from school with her after yet another peaceful day.

Oh right, you owed her that after ditching her on the first day of school to go fight a crazy weirdo with evil powers. “Did you want to go today or something?”

Aika grinned. “I mean, we could. But I thought of something better!” Aika seemed so excited she was skipping along the street. You weren’t exactly sure what had her more excited than her favorite café.

“Starfall is having a concert this Saturday, and I won two tickets in a radio contest!” Aika exclaimed, hands excitedly grabbing your shoulders.

“Uh…” You weren’t sure what to say.

“Aaaaand you’ll come with me, right?” Aika pressed, looking pleadingly at you.

“Starfall?”

“You really didn’t listen to that CD I gave you, did you?” Aika frowned at you.

“Ummm…” You vaguely remembered the CD you had received from Aika for your last birthday that was probably somewhere under your bed at this current moment.

“I can’t believe you!” Aika scoffed. “Well now you have no choice because you’re coming with me!”

You agreed warily, knowing very well of Aika’s idol obsessions, even if you didn’t remember most of their names since she had so many groups she liked and talked to you about. 

“I’m so excited! I’ll finally get to see Tsuki in person!”

Aika was practically salivating at this point, pulling out her phone and turning it to show you her background, which depicted three guys in what seemed to be typical idol wear, blazers with colored accents with no shirts on underneath. There were two guys, one with dyed brown hair and one with black hair, both flanking the boy in the middle who had bright red dyed hair and was sending a sweet smile towards the camera, and Aika quickly pointed him out to you.

“His name is Tsukiya Arai, but everyone calls him Tsuki! I need you there with me or I might faint before I see him!”

“Why? Is he that intimidating?” you inquired.

“No, he’s the nicest! He even visits fans who are in the hospital sometimes! He’s just too cool!” Aika was in full fangirl mode now, you had created a monster who was not going to stop talking until you were at the concert.

“…anyways, I wanna meet the other members too but Tsuki is just too cute!” Aika lamented dreamily.

Ten minutes, and a few music videos you were shown on Aika’s phone, you finally reached the part in your walk home when you and Aika went in different directions.

Hands on her hips, Aika looked sternly at you. “I know you’re not going to listen to that CD, but I’m coming by your house at six on Saturday, so you better be ready!”

“Fine, fine,” you acquiesced. “See you Saturday!”

 

 

“Very good, you look just like a boyband groupie!”

“I wasn’t asking you!” You glared at Teru, who was dully examining his own paws after glancing up at your outfit. “You know Aika will complain at me if I’m not dressed at least presentably!”

“I mean you could hope that monsters attack the concert so you get out of it,” Teru mused.

You thought about it; it would be a relief, but then you would have to fight monsters which seemed like more work than sitting through a concert with screaming girls all around you.

“I suppose I’ll come with, maybe poke your face if you look too bored,” Teru announced, snaking around your neck like a scarf just as the doorbell rang, signaling Aika’s arrival.

Aika was fully decked out in her Starfall t-shirt, makeup and hair done to perfection, grinning in excitement.

“Ready to go?” She asked, and turned to go at your nod. “Your makeup looks good, I’m impressed!” she added.

The train ride to the concert hall became louder and louder as more girls in Starfall gear got onto the train, packing it to the brim by the time you finally got to your stop, girls rushing off the train in droves, heading towards the concert.

The concert hall was a short walk from the train station, and you went to head into the venue before you were stopped by Aika’s hand on your upper arm. “We can’t go in yet! Before Starfall concerts, fans trade photos and merch of the guys outside! Now, here.” Aika pulled out a glittery bag from inside her purse, which she opened to reveal a bunch of photos, keychains, and other items from the band, pulling out a photo of the brown-haired guy from Starfall in a swimsuit, handing it to you. You can try and trade this one of Akira while I do my major trading!”

Trying to keep a straight face as Teru openly laughed at your plight, you nodded, taking the photo from Aika and following along as she approached a big group of girls to the side of the venue who all appeared to be in the middle of trading items already.

As soon as you got to the edge of the group, holding your photo by your side, right up until the girls noticed you, some greeting Aika by name, and one beside you squealing and pointing at the photo in your hand.

“What do you want for that Akira photo? Akira is so cute, I need it!” she said to you, startling you a bit with her excitement.

The girl then began spreading out her stock of photos before you, Aika grinning and patting you on the shoulder before turning to other girls to discuss their own items. Great.

Looking through the girl’s photos with feigned interest, you noticed a lot of the red and black haired guys, but none of the boy who was in the photo you held.

“Akira is my favorite, so I’ll trade any of my photos of Tsuki or Naoki for him!” the girl explained.

“Um, I’ll pick one at random,” you decided, to the girl’s slight confusion that you weren’t carefully looking through each photo one by one, but she acquiesced, holding the fanned out photos towards you.

Reaching a hand out, you closed your eyes and plucked a photo from her hand.

“Oooh, nice choice!” the girl spoke, and you opened your eyes to see a photo of the red-haired boy, eyes closed and lips pursed in an attempt to look like he was about to kiss the viewer of the photo.

“Oh, into that kinda stuff?” You were already embarrassed looking at the photo, but Teru’s words shot red into your cheeks. Quickly giving the girl the photo she wanted, you excused yourself to an area a bit away from the group of girls, stuffing the photo into a pocket.

Around fifteen minutes later, Aika strolled back to you, bag filled with new goodies. “So, how’d you fare?” she asked.

“Uh… fine,” you replied shortly, not wanting to think about that photo any longer. Luckily, Aika didn’t press the issue, instead linking her arm with yours and skipping over to the concert hall’s entrance, handing your tickets to be scanned and then dragging you into the hall.

Your seats were fairly close to the front; aisle seats in the middle section of the third row. Makes sense, you reasoned, since Aika had won these tickets in a contest they were bound to be good seats.

“I can’t believe we’re in the third row! We’re so close we can make eye contact!” Aika was losing her mind she was so excited, practically bouncing in her seat. Luckily, it wasn’t too long until the show started so Aika refrained from showing you all the trades she had made outside, at least for now.

The lights finally dimmed, only to be quickly replaced by different colored spotlights roaming the crowd before settling on the stage as the three boys were introduced, and each came out to the stage to calls of their names, very notably by Aika who was currently on her way to giving you a headache with her screaming.

Their set began with a lively number, and to your surprise, for the finale of the first song, the boys all came into the aisles of the concert hall, touching girls’ awaiting hands as they continued to sing. You were close enough to the aisle that Aika was reaching over you to hold her hand out, leaving you a bit squished into your seat.

The boys had made their way around most of the aisles, but you weren’t sure if they would make it to yours, but were hoping if they did, it would be soon, so Aika would get off of you.

“Fun concert, huh?” You tried to keep your eye from twitching. Teru was making this experience somehow even more miserable.

In a bit of luck, the red haired guy had come to the aisle beside you, touching Aika’s hand with a bright smile as his eyes drifted to the sea of fans in the rest of your aisle who were all waving at him.

_Okay_ , you assumed, _he’ll walk by you and then you can stop having people climb over you_.

Which is why the situation was made weirder when his eyes seemed to stop on yours. It couldn’t have been more than a second, but his gaze captured yours with an intensity that did not match the cute smile on his face.

The moment was over as soon as it began, and the boy went back up on stage to reunite with the other two members of the group to lead into their next song.

“Oh my god,” Aika squealed in your ear. “Tsuki looked at you, you’re so lucky!”

Right. You should probably refer to the guys by something other than their hair color, and Aika was making it hard to forget the redhead’s name with all her gossiping about him.

“That _was_ weird,” Teru added, once Aika had turned her attention away from you. “For a second I thought he was looking at me too,” Teru pondered, relaxing more onto your shoulder. “Though maybe I’m expecting too much from ditzy boy band members.”

The first half of the concert was fairly standard fare, with no more audience tours, much to your relief, as you did not want to survive monster attacks only to die to crazy fangirls trampling you in order to get to their boyband crushes.

When it was finally intermission, you got up to go to the bathroom, Aika staying behind as she didn’t want to miss a second of the experience.

The walk to the hall was fine at first, until you noticed that the line for the bathroom was fifty-something girls long. Looks like that was a no-go.

There had to be another bathroom somewhere else; you turned back the way you came and tried the other side of the venue, hoping the other concert-goers would be too lazy to go to a secondary bathroom, leaving it free for you.

After a few minutes of walking, however, you hadn’t found a bathroom. Or really any rooms. Why was this concert hall so filled with people but not enough bathrooms to match?

Finally, you saw a door ahead of you in the long, empty hallway you had found yourself in.

“Hey, are you lost?”

Oops, you were too lost in your thoughts, you didn’t even notice that someone was talking to you.

“No, I was just–” Well, you tried to reply, at least until you turned around.

Oh god, it was the crimson-haired boy. What was he doing in an empty hallway and why could you not remember his name? You were blanking on Aika’s fangirling about him earlier… hopefully you didn’t have any reason to say his name because you could not remember it, and you were pretty sure he didn’t want to be called red hair boy.

“You’re zoning out again,” Teru hissed, and you realized that the boy was just staring at you since you hadn’t finished what you were saying earlier.

“Um, sorry, was looking for a bathroom but there’s none here so I’ll just go, bye!” You weren’t sure if he even caught what you said since you said it so fast and tried to back away to get back to the bathroom with the long line, hoping it would be less long by now.

Once again, you were stopped, this time by a hand on your shoulder. Turning your head back with apprehension, you were worried. Aika would never forgive you if you made this guy mad and he kicked you out of the concert. Though you were once again surprised to see that his face was filled with concern for you.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you! I can show you where the bathroom is over here if you’d like?” he offered, giving you a small smile.

Ugh. Even if you weren’t a fangirl like Aika, it was still nerve-wracking to be right in front of this guy who had such an idol presence that it was almost palpable. At the same time, you really had to go to the bathroom.

“If you don’t mind…” You weren’t sure what else to say. Luckily, that seemed to be all he needed, as he turned around, telling you to follow him.

“I saw you in the audience before,” he admitted. “I hope you’re enjoying the concert!”

“Yeah…” What do you even say to one of the people who are performing in said concert?

He led you into a room that was in an area of single rooms. There were also some bodyguards at the end of the hallway, making you feel more awkward. Where was he taking you?

Opening the door, you quickly noticed that this didn’t seem like a bathroom, exactly. Looking around at the plush couch and table stocked with snacks, you quickly realized that this was more than likely his dressing room.

“You can use my bathroom if you’d like!” he told you.

Oh god, you felt really bad now. He went out of his way to help you when you were lost and let you use his private bathroom, and you couldn’t even remember his name. Quickly thanking him, you headed into the bathroom.

When you came out, he was sitting on the couch, and you quickly went down in a slight bow, thanking him, before heading towards the door.

“Wait!”

Oh, what was it now? You didn’t think you could take more of this; you just wanted to go back to Aika’s screeching in your ear. Should you even tell Aika that you ran into her favorite popstar?

“I just wanted to ask your name,” the boy said, making his way over to stand in front of you, really highlighting how much taller than you he was as you made awkward eye contact with his deep brown eyes.

You quickly told him your name, hoping that was all he wanted before you died of awkwardness. He smiled, running a hand shortly through his hair. Why did he look so bashful? You were the one talking with some famous celebrity!

“I assume you know my name, since you came to the concert and all, but I’m–” He paused at your completely lost look. “Wait, do you not know my name?”

“Um…” Mission failed! How could you have not gotten out of here without revealing that you had no idea who he was before Aika invited you to the concert? “I… um, my friend really likes you and she didn’t want to go to your concert alone and–” Oh no, you were rambling. You quickly shut your mouth and hoped he would let you leave in peace.

To your surprise, he began laughing. Was this the kind of laugh that came before the villain pressed a level and opened a trapdoor to a pit of waiting sharks? No, he didn’t seem quite that evil.

“Sorry,” he said, stifling the rest of his laughter. “Most people wouldn’t be honest about something like that so it caught me off guard!”

You were happy that he seemed to not be mad, until he stuck his hand out towards you, seemingly implying you take it, and so you did, very hesitantly.

“My name is Tsukiya,” he introduced himself, shaking your hand with a firm grip. “Also… before you go; I hope it isn’t too forward, but would you mind if I asked for your contact information? I don’t often get to meet people as funny as you and then maybe you’d remember my name!”

What? Was he crazy?

His smile waned a bit and you realized you said that last part out loud.

“I mean… uh…”

Just then, he pulled a phone out from his back pocket, handing it to you. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’d love to meet with you again.”

His thousand-watt smile was killing you. Hesitantly, you entered your phone number and name into the contact information page he had opened.

Just then, the door opened and an assistant called out to Tsukiya, informing him that he needed to head back out to do the second half of the show, before informing him that he would leave to tell the other band members the same information.

Taking his phone back, Tsukiya placed it back in his pocket before opening the door behind you, gesturing for you to exit with him.

“I wish we could’ve talked more, but I’ll text you so you’ll have my number in your phone!”

And with that, he set off in the opposite direction from you, leaving you scrambling to get back to Aika in time for the show to start again.

“How do you get yourself in trouble when there aren’t even any monsters?” Teru inquired during your walk down the long, empty hallway back to the main hall.

“Ugh, don’t remind me. And I definitely can’t tell Aika about this. You know she’ll kill me just to get my phone if it has Tsukiya’s number on it!” you replied quickly.

“Oooh, already calling him by name, are we?” Teru slyly spoke.

You swatted at your shoulder in lieu of replying, as you had already gotten back to an area where there were people who would look at you funny if you started yelling at your shoulder.

“Long line?” Aika asked you. “A minute more and you’d miss the start of the second half!”

“Yeah…” You reluctantly agreed. You still weren’t sure what to do with an admittedly cute pop star having your phone number, but for now you should probably add it to the pile of secrets that you were already keeping from Aika.

Who knows if he would even text you? Your phone hadn’t received any new texts. He was probably just playing around or trying to be nice or something.

“Ohhhh pinch me or I’m going to faint!” What was Aika yelling about now?

“Do you think one of them will pick me?” she asked you excitedly.

“Pick you for what?”

Aika scrunched up her nose. “Didn’t you hear? The boys just announced they’re each going to grab a girl from the audience to play a game on stage with them!”

Ah. That would explain the extra screaming and arm waving going on all around you from girls who wanted to be picked. You shrunk down in your seat just as Aika was almost bursting out of hers; you were already embarrassed enough that you had to admit to a famous person that you didn’t know who they were, you didn’t want to deal with informing the entire band that you had never heard of them before this week.

“Oooh, it’s Naoki!” The black-haired boy had come down from the stage near you, eyes roaming the crowd, the two other boys walking down from the stage behind him.

The brown-haired boy – Akira – was the first one to choose a girl, picking a girl from near the back of the hall and bringing her to the stage. Only two left – and the black-haired guy also made his choice, holding a hand out to a girl in the front row, much to the grumbles of unfairness from the girls all around you, wishing they had been sitting in her seat.

Looking at the floor now, you figured that you were in the clear, turning your eyes to the stage to watch whatever weird game was going to go on.

“Um, (Name),” Aika’s voice was quick and insistent. You turned to her with a raised eyebrow, wondering what she wanted now. “No, not this way! Look beside you!” she hissed when you turned to meet her eyes.

Confused, you turned to look the opposite way, only to feel a cold dread shoot down your spine. Tsukiya evidently hadn’t had enough of you yet, as he was standing next to you, holding out a hand that went unseen by only you. “Care to join me?” he asked sweetly.

“(Name), _go_ ,” Aika hissed with a light shove to your back. “Before he asks somebody else!”

Your hand raised, but froze midway to taking his hand, but Tsukiya remained unfazed, reaching out the rest of the way and grabbing your hand, pulling you up and out of your seat before setting off towards the stage.

Neither of you said anything on the way to the stage, not like you could hear him easily anyways thanks to the screaming girls all around you.

You walked up the stairs to the stage, meeting with the other two boys and the audience members they had chosen.

“Alright, so we’ll be playing…” Tsukiya reaches into an envelope offered to him by Akira, pulling out the card inside and looking at it. “Team musical chairs!”

_Team_ musical chairs?

“Yeah,” Naoki clarifies to you, as well as the rest of the confused girls in the theatre. “Means that if you don’t get a seat, you can sit on your teammate’s lap and still be in!”

There were both cheers as well as a variety of chatter from the crowd at that revolution, likely jealous that they weren’t up on stage getting the opportunity to sit on their favorite idol’s lap. You, on the other hand, wished you could trade places with any of them. You were really hoping that none of the fans put up pictures of you on hate message boards, you were already pushing your luck hoping that your new part-time job superhero-ing would stay secret.

The speakers began to play what you assumed was one of Starfall’s songs, and the six of you began to circle the five chairs that were brought out onto the stage.

The first round ended with you quickly snagging a chair, followed by Tsukiya grabbing his own and one of the girls having to sit on her partner’s lap. The next round also ended with the same result, except now both of the other girls were sitting on the laps of their teammates. If you could help it, you weren’t going to sit on some random famous guy’s lap, even if the other girls seemed almost eager for it!

The third round had you being extra vigilant of the chairs, dashing into one as soon as the music stopped, leaving one chair for Tsukiya and one for another band member whose partner sat in his lap again.

“Aw, looks like we’re out!” Akira lamented to his partner, as they walked to the other side of the stage.

“Your partner is on fire, Tsukiya! She hasn’t missed a chair yet!” Akira added. “You’re running out of chairs though!”

You smiled politely, not sure what else to do. Aika was surely fuming that you weren’t even taking the chance to live out her dreams of sitting on Tsukiya’s lap.

With only two chairs left, you were getting nervous. Circling the chairs like a hawk, you prepared yourself for the stop of the music as the four of you circled the chairs. Akira and his partner were idly chatting as they circled, and Tsukiya looked fairly carefree, so it seemed that you were the most into the game of the four.

The music abruptly cut off in the middle of your thoughts, but that wasn’t enough to distract you as you threw yourself into a chair, looking back to see Akira in the other one, his partner quickly joining him in his lap.

“Aw, man!” You turned to look at Tsukiya, who was standing in front of you. “I wanted to look cool and get the chair for our team, but whatever gets us the win in the end!” And with that, Tsukiya carefully sat himself on your lap.

And here you thought you were uncomfortable when he asked for your number earlier. Your face tinted a bit red, not sure what you should be doing at the moment, but at least Tsukiya made an effort to not rest all his weight on you so you weren’t in pain or anything. Allowing him to help you up from the chair, a chair was removed from the stage, leaving only the final chair.

At this point you weren’t sure if you should get the chair and be sat on instead of sitting on Tsukiya yourself, or if you should give up the win to the other team. Though you could abstain and have Tsukiya sit down and then expect you in his lap, which was also an awkward thought.

Still unsure of what to do, your group of four circled the chairs again, music seemingly going on forever. Finally, it stopped, and in your moment of indecision, Tsukiya jumped into the chair, grabbing your hand as he did so and pulling you onto his lap.

“We won!” he cheered, voice right by your ear. You nodded slowly, hoping you would be able to go back to your seat soon.

The boys thanked their teammates, Tsukiya letting you go with a victory handshake as you finally got back to your seat.

“I can’t believe your luck!” Aika gushed at you as you two walked out of the theatre. “Next time share some with me! I wish I could’ve gone up there!”

You two reached the station without incident, although you weren’t exactly unaware of all of the chatter directed at you from the other concert-goers who had witnessed you sit in their idol’s lap, however reluctantly.

Sitting down on the train with Aika you turned your phone back on and felt it buzz. Looking down, you quickly made sure that Aika wasn’t looking as you turned your phone away.

_Hope you had fun at the concert!_

_-Tsukiya_

You felt embarrassment wash over you, until another unread text caught your attention.

…from Orion.

_I’m sorry that I saw your face. If you’d like, we can meet up and I’ll show you my secret identity too._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took me so long to get out, had some real life stuff to deal with! Also do not fear, there will be more Sho next chapter!

It had been a few days since Orion had sent you that last text. You had fretted over what to reply to him for half an hour after that, but in the end had just awkwardly texted back “okay”, and left it at that. Hopefully your reply wasn’t too casual and he hadn’t suddenly decided you weren’t worth revealing his identity to or something.

“You know we have to go to the cotton candy booth, right? Sho’s in charge of it and I am not gonna miss seeing him in an apron!” Aika announced, linking her arm with yours as the two of you walked.

You had completely forgotten about the school’s spring carnival until Aika had shown up at your house asking you if you were ready, and luckily you weren’t in your pajamas at that point in the day so you put on some shoes and headed out with her.

“It’s Sho!” Aika exclaimed, pointing past the line to the boy in question, who was currently manning the till. “I’m glad we got here before he went on break!”

With that, the two of you joined the line of mostly girls who were trying to get cotton candy – or more likely, a shot at flirting with Sho.

While Aika was eagerly peering around the line to get a look at Sho in his apron, you were glancing around the crowd to see if anyone looked like they might be a magical boy in their spare time. You almost got excited when you saw a tall blonde boy walk by, until you mentally scolded yourself; you didn’t have long pink hair in real life, so why would Orion actually have blonde hair when he wasn’t transformed.

“Hi Sho!” You somehow missed that you were now at the front of the line, standing in front of Sho, who was looking expectantly at you and Aika.

“Hey Aika,” Sho replied politely. “(Name),” he added, sending a smile your way.

You ordered your cotton candy, and Aika spoke up again while a girl behind Sho went about readying your treats.

“You doing okay, Sho?” Aika asked.

“You mean the thing with Kain?” At Aika’s nod he continued. “I mean, it might have been worse if Cattail hadn’t gotten me away from the giant snake!”

“Oh yeah, it was huge!” Aika agreed.

“Yeah, I just wonder who she really is, since she seemed to know my name,” he lamented.

“Mm, secret identities and all make that hard,” Aika replied.

With that, Sho’s coworker handed him your cotton candy, which he passed to you, ending your conversation.

“Sooo… who do you think she is?” Aika leaned in close to you.

“She?” you echoed.

“Yeah, Cattail. If she knew Sho’s name then she’d have to go to our University, or at least live in this city!” Aika explained.

“Oh,” you replied dumbly. “I don’t really know which Sho fangirl would suddenly get magic powers.”

“I know, I know,” Aika agreed. “But I just wanna know! I wish I could’ve saved Sho and had him all grateful to me!” she gushed.

You ripped off a piece of your cotton candy as Aika’s cellphone began buzzing. She looked down at it with a groan. “Ugh, I promised my friend I’d cover her shift at balloon darts for twenty minutes so she could have a break. Just wander around, I’ll be back before you know it!” And with that, Aika was gone, leaving you to your own devices.

You resolved to keep looking around the crowd, seeing nothing but excited people wandering booths, no secret magical boys to be seen. You hadn’t wandered far when you heard some loud chatter nearby.

“Hey!”

Probably just some overexcited people; it was a carnival after all.

“Hey–” There was a hand on your shoulder. Why was there a hand on your shoulder?

You turned to see a group of a few boys who all looked somewhat familiar.

“This is her, right?’

“Yeah, definitely her!”

“Um…” You were kind of at a loss for words. What did these guys want with _you_?

“Hey, come with us!” And then you had a boy on either side of you, escorting you who knows where.

You were not given much room to protest as you were brought to a classroom inside the building, briefly noticing the sign reading _Butler Café_.

The Café didn’t seem to be open yet; the tables were empty minus a boy readying tables, setting frilly doilies and plates. Now that you looked, there were frills decorating a lot of the classroom.

You didn’t get too good of a look at the rest of the room however, as you were dragged past the table setups and shoved past a black curtain that was set up at the back of the room.

Stumbling a bit, you righted yourself and looked up to meet the startled gaze of a boy who looked to be in the middle of tying the tie to his butler’s uniform.

“What are you–” he started, before one of the guys from before poked his head in.

“We found her wandering around and since you won’t make a move, we brought her to you!”

After that, the curtains were pulled closed again, leaving you and the boy to awkwardly stare at each other, both unsure what to say.

“Uh, sorry…” You backed up a bit. “I’ll just leave.”

You turned your back to him, reaching out to grab the curtain, only to have a hand grab yours from behind.

“Wait!” You turned to look back at the boy, who then used his grip on your hand to pull you to the back of the changing area, farthest away from possible prying ears outside.

“I’m sorry my friends dragged you here,” he apologized sheepishly. “But I’m glad that I could talk to you, since we didn’t get a chance to before.”

 _Before_? Looking closer at his face… wait, was he that guy with the loud friends who had knocked you over the week before? In hindsight, that explained the loud boys who dragged you here.

“Um, Mitsu, right?” you asked.

The boy made a face at that. “No. My friends call me that because they know I hate it.” Composing himself, he smiled at you. “My name is Hiromitsu Maeda, but please don’t call me Mitsu!”

You gave him your name in return and he nodded, suddenly looking uncomfortable, fidgeting in his spot. He stepped closer to you, too close for your comfort, and you made to step back, but Hiromitsu put a hand on your shoulder to halt your attempt at movement.

He was too close. _Oh god, was this some weird love confession_? This was not what you wanted to deal with right now!

“I’m Orion.”

Wait, what? He wasn’t some weird love-at-first-sight stalker?

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I hadn’t encountered any other heroes so I wasn’t sure exactly how to approach you.”

You were kind of dumbfounded, and then you felt a sudden weight on your shoulder.

“I thought you’d never tell her!” Teru smirked at Hiromitsu, who looked embarrassed.

“He was taking so long worrying that I was ready to go and tell her myself.” You looked over to see a small blue bird appear from nowhere onto Hiromitsu’s shoulder.

“Sora!” Hiromitsu protested, cheeks deepening slightly in color.

Your phone broke the awkwardness by ringing loudly, and you looked down to see Aika on your caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Where did you go? I’ve been looking for you for five minutes!” Aika replied.

Quickly, you told her that you were at the butler café indoors.

“What? You went to see hot butler guys without me? Wait there, I’m coming!” The line went dead after that and you sighed, putting your phone away.

“My friend is coming, so we probably shouldn’t be in here together when she gets here,” you told Hiromitsu.

Hiromitsu stepped forward, clearing his throat slightly. “If you want to talk, we can meet after my shift here is done.”

You nodded; you could definitely use whatever information he had, given he’d been superhero-ing for a month longer than you had been. “I guess I should change your contact in my phone to Hiromitsu then,” you joked, setting about the task.

Hiromitsu looked to the side, embarrassment clear in his expression. “Just Hiro is fine, I really hate the ‘Mitsu’ part of my name.”

“Oh okay, no problem,” you acquiesced. You supposed you would hate it too if your friends teased you that much about a section of your name.

“When I’m off, I’ll text you,” Hiro told you, opening the curtain for you both to exit.

“Ohh, he totally got her number!”

“Nice one, Mitsu!”

“Ugh,” Hiro lamented, carding a hand through his dark hair. “I’m sorry about them.”

“(Name)!” Aika had arrived, bounding over to you. Noticing your physical closeness to Hiro, Aika raised an eyebrow at you, but said nothing. You assumed this meant she was going to grill you for details the second Hiro was out of earshot.

Hiro was soon taken away by customers arriving as the café was now open and Aika drug you into that line to be seated.

Hiro was the one to seat you, giving you menus. “My name is Hiro and I’ll be your waiter,” he said with a bow. Taking your orders, he went to the back to prepare them.

“Sooo… Hiro?” Aika had a very predatory look on her face as she leaned on an arm. “Was he the same guy who made you fall over before?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed. “I think his friends thought he liked me so they dragged me all the way here when I was walking around the carnival.”

“Ohhh.” Aika nodded. “I was wondering where you got off to, but being kidnapped wasn’t what I assumed happened!”

“He’s cute though,” she added. “Though his friends could take their energy levels down a bit.”

“Funny, coming from you you!” You retorted, and Aika shrugged her shoulders.

“So, do you wanna go out with him?” she inquired.

“Aika!” you chastised. “He didn’t even ask me out! And he’s clearly not interested in me like that!” you added, eyes drifting to an empty table where Teru and Sora were chatting with each other. You knew Hiro was talking to you because of your shared “hobby”, but obviously you couldn’t tell Aika about that.

Your conversation drifted to other topics, much to your relief. You weren’t terrible at keeping secrets, but it was harder when it was your best friend you were keeping things from. After you finished eating your food, Aika dragged you around to various other booths, ending up at Sho’s booth once again closer to the closing time of the carnival.

“You know he’s going to think that you’re a cotton candy addict,” you teased Aika.

“I like it enough,” she retorted, turning her nose up. “But I like getting to see Sho more!”

You rolled your eyes, pulling your phone out when it buzzed, seeing a text from Hiro asking you to meet him by the school gates.

“What’s that?” Aika looked at your phone screen. “Ooh, meeting butler guy? I knew you were into him!”

“Aika, I am definitely not!” you argued.

AIka waved a hand in a dismissive manner. “Fine, fine, just go meet him, but you have to tell me all about your date later!”

“Fine.” You weren’t going to get anywhere with her persistence. “Let me know how it goes with you and Sho!”

“Trust me, he’ll eventually see how great of a girlfriend I’d be!” And with that, you and Aika parted ways as you made your way to the gates to meet Hiro.

You turned the corner to get to the gate, seeing Hiro waiting by himself, loud friends nowhere in sight. He waved as he spotted you, turning to walk out of the gates as soon as you had made it to his side.

“I figured we could head to the park to talk more privately,” he told you.

“Teru and Sora aren’t with you?” you asked, not seeing the two animals. “Last I saw they were in the café.”

Hiro chuckled. “I’m not sure where they went. Or where Sora goes all the time when she disappears.”

“Yeah, Teru comes in and out all the time,” you agreed.

You reached the park, making sure to sit down at a bench that had nobody near it.

“Anything you wanted to ask?” Hiro spoke up, and you thought about it.

“Do you know who Kain really is?”

Hiro shook his head. “If I did, I would go find him myself where he can’t just portal away like every other time I fight him.”

Looking out over the rest of the sparsely populated park, Hiro then turned to look you in the eyes. “I don’t know what he is in his normal life either. He always causes trouble at random times so I can’t tell if he normally has work or school. I’ve wondered if he’s some sort of mother’s basement hermit but I honestly have no idea.”

You hummed your agreement; you couldn’t even deduce Orion’s identity by yourself, how were you supposed to figure out the weird red-eyed boy who wouldn’t stop flirting with you every time you crossed paths with him and his monsters?

“I would’ve never guessed you were Orion,” you told him. “Though I only met you once, so not too surprising.”

“Yeah,” Hiro agreed. “I knew Cattail was someone at my school, but I didn’t think it would be you.”

You winced slightly at your unfortunate superhero name coming from his lips. “Wait, how did you know I went to our school?” you asked him, eyebrows narrowing. Were you just really bad at this?

Hiro laughed. “Well, Sora isn’t usually too helpful, but she told me she sensed another companion around school, and I assumed it was yours.”

“How do you know it wasn’t Kain’s and he goes to our university too?” you retorted.

“Sora can sense dark energy, but can’t tell whether it’s a companion or a monster, so if she was able to figure out a companion aura then it would have to be a good one,” he explained.

“Teru never told me any of this!” you complained. “And wait, if Sora sensed Teru, wouldn’t he be able to sense her too?”

Hiro shrugged, chuckling a little as you fumed about your clearly inferior animal companion, who seemed like he enjoyed keeping you in the dark at this point!

“Well, that’s all I know at this point,” Hiro admitted. “I have to get to my part-time job soon, but I can walk you home first if you’d like.”

You accepted Hiro’s offer, heading off in the direction of your home with him. You talked about your lives, and you learned that he was an only child and his part time job was at a bakery.

“You should come by sometime, I’ll give you a nice discount!”

Smiling, you agreed, realizing once he told you the name of the place he worked at that it was Aika’s favorite café. Finally reaching your house, you turned to Hiro as he stood before you slightly awkwardly.

“Well, I hope we don’t have to fight again too soon, but let’s kick Kain’s butt again!” you told him with a grin, holding out your hand.

Hiro took your offered hand, shaking it in agreeance. “See you next fight, _partner_.”

You then parted ways with Hiro, heading into your house while plotting exactly what you wanted to have for dinner that night. You really didn’t expect Orion to be someone like Hiro, but he seemed like he was a nice person, and that was much better than having Orion end up being a jerk. You already had Teru, and that was more than enough to fill the bad personality quota in your life.

While you set about making your dinner, your phone chimed. Finishing up what you were doing, you checked your phone to see a new message from Aika asking if you had finished a certain question on an assignment due the next week.

Clicking on the message, you replied that you hadn’t even started the assignment yet, before noticing an unread message dated when you were with Hiro in the park.

It was from Tsukiya. Oh god, you realized with a start that it had completely slipped your mind to reply to the text he had sent you the night of that concert.

“Ooh, what’s this?” You jumped a bit at Teru’s sudden arrival.

“Done ditching me for your friend you never told me about?” you asked him, roughly petting his fur. “How come Hiro’s companion told him when she sensed you but you didn’t tell me you sensed her?”

“Hey!” Teru barked at you, flying away from your rough pats. “If I just told you everything, how would you learn?”

You went to chase him, hands ready to swat him out of the air until he dodged you, floating over your head and over to the cellphone you had left abandoned at your dinner table.

“You’ve got a date?” he asked.

“What?” You hadn’t even had a chance to read the message, as Teru had interrupted you with his sudden appearance.

Heading back over, you picked up the phone, re-opening the message to see that Teru wasn’t off the mark with his interpretation of the message waiting for you.

_Can I see you tonight?_

“What does he even want from me?” you wondered out loud. He was a pop star, clearly he must have better things to do than go on a date with a random concert-goer.

“You’re not gonna reply to him?” Teru leered from over your shoulder.

“What do I even say?” you retorted, frowning.

“You reply _sure, I’d love to_!” Teru deadpanned.

“But…” In your moment of indecision, Teru had slinked his way over to your phone, typing out the response he had just suggested and hitting the send button before you could stop him.

“Teru!” you shouted.

Teru gave you a pitying look. “How would you ever get anything done without me? No wonder you’re so mad the one time I didn’t tell you one bit of information.”

“Ugh!” You threw your hands up, half in surrender and half in frustration. Looking back at your phone, you noticed a reply from Tsukiya already, telling you to meet him at a restaurant downtown in an hour.

You sighed, gathering your not-yet-eaten plate of dinner and putting it in the fridge for another time, before heading upstairs to put on slightly nicer clothes.

It was a miracle that you had survived interacting with Tsukiya at the concert, but now that you were heading downtown to have dinner assumedly alone with a pop star, you nerves were beginning to catch up with you. Looking in your mirror, you adjusted your outfit for the third time. You were running too close to out of time so you had to abandon your room at that point and hope that you didn’t look too bad or anything.

You made sure to leave with enough time to get you to the restaurant on time, at least according to the map on your phone. Arriving at the restaurant, you were relieved that you decided to dress up a bit more than usual, as it looked like a pretty fancy place. Great, just what your nerves needed, rich people judging you for your imperfect table manners.

“Hi there.” You weren’t really given a chance to run as you looked to your side to see a boy that you assumed was Tsukiya. His deep red hair was familiar, but he had covered it partially with a beanie as well as donning a pair of dark sunglasses. His attire was around the same level of formal as yours; he wore a white V-neck shirt with a black blazer and a pair of dark blue jeans.

He gave your attire a quick look-over, before escorting you to the door, opening it for you to enter first. The entrance led into a small foyer with a desk that seemed more suited to a hotel than a restaurant, at least the restaurants you typically went to. The foyer was decorated in golds and reds, similar to the lady who was sitting behind the desk, who looked up from her nails to look at the two of you.

Upon his entrance, the hostess was falling over herself. “Mr. Arai, your table is just this way!”

Biting your lip, you followed behind her and Tsukiya, noting that your outfit was not as nice as you thought as you observed women and men dining in suits and fancy dresses. Why were you even here? You were regretting not bolting before Tsukiya saw you.

You were sat at a table, the waitress falling over Tsukiya while barely looking at you, which suited you just fine.

The dinner went by in the same manner, the food so fancy that there was barely any on the plate and unappetizing in its sheer attempt to be upscale. You weren’t really sure what it was, to be honest, but it was green and didn’t look like any green thing that you had knowledge of before. How were people supposed to eat a tiny square of mystery green substance and not be hungry afterwards? You didn’t even want to risk poking it with your fork at this point.

When you went to finally go and poke it with your fork, Tsukiya spoke up. You almost forgot he was there you were so focused on the weird food.

“Are you okay?” He really looked concerned, which made you feel bad for being bored at a fancy restaurant with a famous person.

“Sorry, it’s just…” How could you phrase this without offending him? You really didn’t need all his fangirls after you for being rude to him.

“I thought you’d like a fancy restaurant but do you want to go somewhere else?” he asked you.

“Sorry…” You weren’t sure what else to say until your mind drifted to an outing with Aika around a month previous. Tsukiya had gone out of his way to ask you to dinner and you felt bad just leaving him after not eating any of the weird fancy food. “Um, there’s an ice cream place by my house, my treat.”

What were you thinking? A boring ice cream place? Sure Tsukiya had been nothing but kind to you, but there was no way he wouldn’t just get up and ditch you right now, right?

“Sure,” he grinned, leaning forward in his seat. “Let’s go!”

What? You were still confused as Tsukiya grabbed your hand, leading you past the confused waitress who was bringing your next course, just as appetizing looking as the previous, and straight to the door.

“Charge my usual account, please,” Tsukiya told the hostess with a smile, who hastily bowed to him as the two of you exited the restaurant.

“Where are we headed?” he asked you, still not letting go of your hand. As well, you found yourself allowing him to keep holding on, not sure if it would be more awkward to hold on or let go.

You led him down the streets, hoping that the few people who were out at this time of day wouldn’t somehow recognize him.

“Don’t worry, people don’t usually see through my disguise.” Did he read your mind? “I go to that restaurant a lot for work so they’re used to seeing me looking like this.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” you admitted.

Tsukiya laughed. “I’m sorry, by the way, I’m so used to going there that I forgot how tiny and weird their food is.” He smiled softly at your baffled look, seeming a bit sheepish himself. “You didn’t want to offend me, right?”

“Um, yeah…” You reluctantly admitted. If he already said it out loud, it hopefully didn’t hurt to admit it.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been out like this,” he told you. “I can’t remember the last time I had ice cream since my manager would kill me!” he laughed.

“Oh, I don’t want you to get in trouble,” you said, but his expression remained the same.

“As I said before at the concert, I don’t get to be around people like you much, so I definitely want to get ice cream with you!” he insisted, attempting a serious facial expression that looked more cute than serious.

At your nod of acquiesce, he continued. “So, how did you end up at my concert, Miss didn’t-seem-to-know-my-group-at-all?” he teased.

You blushed a bit at being directly called out like that. “My friend likes you and had an extra ticket.”

Tsukiya hummed his reply, squeezing your hand. “I’m glad you ended up coming.”

Tsukiya was so confusing. Taking you to a fancy restaurant and then happily ditching the fancy establishment to go to a neighborhood ice cream shop with you. You really weren’t sure what to make of him at this point.

Once you had gotten to the ice cream shop, you noticed it was pretty busy inside. Did not seem like a great place to bring a famous pop star into.

Tsukiya was blissfully ignorant, reaching to open the door for you before you pulled him over to the side, his eyes assumedly wide with surprise behind his sunglasses.

“There are too many people in there and I don’t want to start a mob. Tell me what flavor you want and I’ll go inside and get it,” you asserted.

Tsukiya looked a bit like he wanted to protest and come in with you, but relented and told you the flavor he wanted.

“Okay, I’ll be right back!” you told him, heading into the store.

Turns out you had made the right call, as you walked in, a song you heard from Starfall’s concert was playing on the store’s numerous speakers, many girls in the store making comments about Starfall.

“They’re all so cute!”

“I wish I could meet them! I’d die if they even looked at me!”

You tiptoed past the gaggle of teenage girls squealing over the boy you currently had waiting for you outside. You mentally scolded yourself, you had no need to sneak past them, it wasn’t like they could read your mind or smell Tsukiya’s scent on you like bloodhounds… right?

Getting in line, you perused the flavors yourself before ordering ice cream for the two of you.

Heading back outside with the procured treats, you found Tsukiya right where you left him, tapping his foot on the ground and humming to himself.

Handing him his cone, you looked over your shoulder to see some girls currently paying for their ice creams and assumedly planning on leaving the store after that.

“We should probably get out of here before all the girls in the store come out and see you,” you quickly filled him in on what you had overheard in the store.

Tsukiya seemed not too bothered by that, but acquiesced to your wishes, following you to a park that was close to your house.

Looking around the park in fascination, Tsukiya made his way over to the swing set, sitting down on one of the swings, prompting you to take the other. You were quickly realizing that you were really alone with Tsukiya now, no service employees or potentially crazy fangirls around to take away from the awkward silence that now surrounded you oppressively.

Tsukiya, however, didn’t seem to have the same feelings as you did in the moment. “So what do you do?”

“Huh?”

“Well, you know what my job is, so I was wondering what you do.” Oh, that’s what he meant.

“I’m a student.” You weren’t really sure what else to say. Why were you so awkward? It definitely didn’t help that he was a pretty attractive guy and was looking at you with such interest in what you were saying.

“Well hopefully that gives you more freedom than I have,” he lamented with a small smile. “I’m just happy if I get three hours of sleep between days of working.”

You winced slightly, and he laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I’m used to it by now. Kinda what happens when you choose my kind of job!”

You tried to think of some comforting words, but nothing was coming to you in the moment, and then a loud ringtone sounded out in the silent park. You had a moment of panic that your phone had chosen right now to make a loud and awkward entrance via somebody calling you at this inopportune moment, until you noticed Tsukiya reach into his pants pocket and you realized that it wasn’t your ringtone that was blaring loudly.

“Hello?” Tsukiya answered his phone, and then simply listened to the person on the other side for about twenty seconds as you confusedly watched on. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go meet Akira and you can get us from there.”

Hanging up his phone, Tsukiya sighed, taking a lick from his ice cream as he turned back to face you. “Just got a call from my manager; he scheduled us for a last-minute late night photoshoot.”

“Oh... okay.”

Tsukiya didn’t really seem bothered by your lack of in-depth response, leaning down to give you a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the ice cream, I’ll have to return the favor sometime.”

And with that, he waved goodbye to you as he made his way to the opposite entrance of the park than the one you had entered with him before.

“So that wasn’t a date, huh?”

Of course Teru came back the second Tsukiya left so he could tease you openly, without you having to put on the ruse that you weren’t hearing and seeing a magic talking animal that enjoyed bothering you.

“Where did you even go anyways?” you asked him, standing up from the swing and moving your ice cream away from your animal companion who was eyeing it. Narrowing your eyes, you dangled the ice cream just out of his reach to implore him to actually answer a question of yours for once.

Teru scrunched his face up, before rolling his eyes. “I can go into a magic realm where I can rest and recharge my energy.”

“That’s where you go?” Teru was already licking the ice cream you brought closer to him when he answered your question. “You never told me there’s a place to go to restore magic energy!”

“That’s because it doesn’t work for you, stupid!” Teru replied. “It’s for beings of pure magic, not people who use it sometimes to turn into a frilly magical girl.”

You bristled, walking past Teru to deposit the ice cream into a garbage can, drawing a cry of irritation from Teru.

You pulled out your cellphone from your bag to check the time, noting that it was on silent, so it definitely could not have rung out loud earlier like you feared. Unlocking your phone, however, you suddenly wished you hadn’t left it on silent.

There were at least four missed calls, the last dated half an hour ago, and all from Hiro. Clicking on your text messages, you found a variety of messages, starting by asking where you were and telling you to meet him, to worried messages that something had happened to you, to finally a text telling you to call him as soon as you could. Pressing his contact number, the phone began ringing, with Hiro picking up after three rings.

“Hiro, I just got your –”

“Are you okay?!” Hiro’s worried voice rang out.

“Uh…” you were very confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There was a giant monster attack downtown, I thought maybe they got to you or something!”

“A _what?_ ” You locked eyes with Teru, who floated close enough to hear the phone conversation.

“There was a swarm of them, I don’t know how I got rid of all of them.” Now that you listened closer, he did sound pretty exhausted on the phone. “So where were you anyway?”

“Um, out with a friend?”

“What?” he sounded surprised. “(Name), you have to answer your phone if there’s an issue. People could’ve been hurt!”

“I’m sorry…” You weren’t sure what else to say.

“Just… pay more attention to your phone.”

“I will,” you promised. “You should probably get some rest.”

“I know…” he trailed off, sighing before saying goodbye and hanging up the call.

“He sure was mad.”

“Teru!” you whirled on him. “Why didn’t you tell me there were some monsters?”

“I didn’t sense any.” Teru itched his ear. “I can’t sense issues in this world when I’m in the rest space.”

“Well I guess I’ll have to keep my phone’s ringer on then,” you decided. “Hiro seemed pretty upset. Though I guess I would be too if I had to fight a ton of monsters because my partner didn’t answer their phone.”

Teru hummed. “Well, I can’t sense anything here, so he did a good job getting rid of whatever was here.”

Rolling your eyes at Teru, you turned to leave the park, switching your phone’s ringer on as you walked and hoping that next time there was trouble Teru would either sense something or you’d notice that you had a phone call.


	5. Chapter 5

Two days after the attack found you at the grocery store trying to gage which fruits were the ripest.

“They’ll all go bad if you just stand here and stare at them forever.”

You turned your head slightly to the side, glaring at your assigned animal companion, frustrated that you couldn’t reply to him since there was a middle aged woman about five feet from you looking at the oranges and would definitely hear you swearing at what she perceived to be nothing.

“You should buy some ice cream while you’re here!” Teru chimed, baring his teeth in excitement. That seemed to be the only thing he actually liked recently, since he sure didn’t like giving you information you needed in order to fight weird monsters adequately.

Rolling your eyes, you picked up a few apples and put them in your basket, moving onto another section of the store.

Just as you were reaching over to the shelf to grab some cereal, the front doors of the store burst open with a bang.

“Everyone run! There’s a monster a block over and it’s already demolished another store!” A frantic woman screamed to the rest of the store, which then went up in a panic as people were dropping their baskets and abandoning their shopping carts in favor of running out of the store.

The aisle you were in was now completely empty, and you placed your basket on the ground before reaching into your pocket for your cellphone, pulling up Hiro’s contact number and pressing dial.

“What’s up?” Hiro sounded kind of rushed when he answered.

“Um, there’s a monster near a grocery store I’m in.” You quickly filled him in on the address as you looked around to make sure nobody was still in the store.

“You might have to deal with that one on your own.”

“What?” Was this payback for you not coming to help him before?

“I just got a look at the news and there’s another monster near the central mall, so it looks like we have to split up and get them before things get worse.”

Oh, so it wasn’t just Hiro being vengeful. Now that you thought about it, he probably wasn’t the type for that.

“Alright, well… good luck.” You weren’t excited at the prospect of having to fight alone, and for the first time in a while.

“You too,” Hiro replied, before hanging up the phone, assumedly to go right into danger without fear like he usually did. You wished you had some of his nerve right about now.

“…well? The more time you stand around, the more people that could be hurt.”

You wanted to snap at Teru, but he was unfortunately right. You couldn’t let people get hurt just because you didn’t want to deal with the potential danger. Looking around, you noticed the store had some security cameras. They looked old and probably awful quality-wise, but they were still something you weren’t about to risk, so you quickly made your way outside to an alleyway near the store that was also empty.

“Come on, sparkles…” you mumbled to yourself in an effort to transform faster. At least yours was instantaneous, unlike the magical girl cartoons you watched which had to undergo minute long transformation scenes with weird catchphrases.

“Ready to go?” Teru asked you, and at your nod, made his way out of the alley. “I can sense something at the end of the next block so I’m going to speed us up.”

That was your only warning as the sometimes-hated wings sprouted on your back and you and Teru took to the air, rapidly speeding towards a large black shape whose negative presence you began to feel the closer you got to it.

Landing on the ground about fifteen feet away, you watched as a large black wolf-like creature snarled, bending a stop sign in its jaws before it noticed you. You backed up a bit at its approach, glad to notice that the area had been vacated before there were any casualties.

Your outlook was notably changed as the beast braced itself on its hind legs before using that momentum to pounce at you, jaws at the ready. You barely had time to react at all before the wings on your back pulled up, winding you slightly at the suddenness.

“You don’t have time to stand around or it’ll eat you!” Teru called out to you.

“Right.” You held a hand out and your staff appeared in it. At least you seemed to be getting the hang of this the longer you did it. Didn’t seem to help you not stand still like an idiot in front of monsters though.

“Just channel everything into one blow and that should get rid of it. I can sense that it’s less strong than that snake you fought before,” Teru informed you, being helpful for once.

Calling to all your power, you began to create another light ball which expanded as you focused. Unfortunately, the wolf wasn’t about to let you get too focused, as it charged towards you, colliding with you just as you released the ball of the light that drove both your vision and the wolf’s white, before swirling into a black as you lost consciousness at the impact.

 

“You might want to wake up soon…”

“…what?” You groggily blinked, seeing Teru right in front of your face.

“Wake up, stupid!” Teru smacked your cheek with his paw, looking one step away from just outright shaking you.

“Ouch, what are you–”

“Oh, are you awake?”

The fog of sleep lifted instantly from your mind when you sat up to see Sho enter the room. Wait, this wasn’t your room. What even happened to you? You couldn’t remember anything after the wolf monster charging you.

“You’re going to need to maintain your form. I had to do it while you were asleep but my power is waning so you’ll have to take over now,” Teru hissed in your ear.

Oh. Now that you noticed it, your hair was still long and pink as it was draped on the bed around you. At least Teru had kept your disguise up while you were unconscious since you really didn’t need Sho knowing who you really were. Speaking of, Sho had made his way to your bedside with a glass of water.

“Are you alright?” When he got no response from you, he continued. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I watched that wolf thing knock you out and brought you back to my house since it was nearby and I didn’t want to just leave you on the street.”

“Oh… thank you.” You weren’t sure what to say or what not to say at this point; your whole focus was entirely on Sho not discovering your identity at this point.

Sho handed the water to you, which you took and gazed warily at before taking a sip from it.

“I don’t know if you remember, but you saved my life before and I really appreciate it.” He looked so genuine, you felt bad for initially doubting his intentions.

“I remember,” you agreed. “Thanks for saving me this time.” You gave him a small smile; it seemed like it was a good thing that Sho found you instead of some news reporter or crazy person.

Sho looked happy at your thanks, yet more nervous than you remember seeing him before, though to be fair you really only saw him at school when you walked by each other on campus. It was weird to have the situation reversed a bit; Sho being nervous to talk to you instead of the more regularly occurring opposite scenario.

“Are those real?”

“What?” You were confused at the change of subject.

“These.” Sho reached a hand out, brushing a finger lightly over one of the cat ears on your head and sending a shiver up your spine at the feeling and you stiffened up, looking awkward.

“Oh, sorry!” Sho retracted his hand with a chuckle. “I was sure that they were just there for decoration.”

“…it’s fine,” you said reluctantly, bringing a hand up to the ear closer to Sho and covering it with your palm as if worried he would try and touch it again.

“I can get you some food if you’d like,” Sho offered, gesturing with his head towards the door of the room.

Teru hissed your name in your ear. “Why are you wasting time here? We don’t need some dumb boy learning your secrets.”

You bit your lip, thinking. Sho was a good guy, and really cute, dressed in a light blue hoodie and jeans, and it would probably annoy Teru if you accepted his offer…

“Sure, that would be nice.”

“What?!” Came the reply from Teru, and you saw him bristling from the corner of your eye. “Fine, then. You do your flirting, I’ll be back at home.” And with that, Teru vanished into a small portal in an indignant huff.

Good riddance. You quickly wiped the annoyed expression off of your face as you turned to Sho who was making his way over to the door. “There are windows in the kitchen so I’ll make something and bring it back in here so nobody else sees you since I’m sure you’d rather avoid making headlines.”

You nodded in agreeance, and Sho left the room, closing the door behind him.

Once you were alone in the room, you were able to actually take a good look at the room you had found yourself in. Getting out of the bed, you took a full look at what you assumed to be Sho’s room.

His furniture was fairly simple; the bed, obviously, as well as a computer desk and chair were the largest installments in the room, as well as a small door that you assumed led to a closet. He had a few books that you assumed were school-related on his desk, as well as some pens, but other than that the room was fairly bare. No video games, posters, or porn magazines (at least from what you could tell) that you would assume would be in the room of a guy your age.

Hearing footsteps coming closer to the room, you refrained from looking under his bed to see if maybe his assumed porn magazines were under there. I mean, it would probably hurt your superheroine image if you were spotted crouching under someone’s bed for whatever reason, not that you thought Sho would tell anyone.

Sho opened the door and you did your best to look normal. _Look normal_ , you chastised yourself,  _who can manage to make long pink hair and a frilly dress look normal?_

“I haven’t gone out for groceries yet so hopefully this is okay,” Sho said, handing you a plate with a sandwich on it before taking his own plate and sitting at his computer chair, turning it to face towards you.

“It’s fine,” you said, taking a bite of the sandwich. “You go out for groceries? Do you live alone?” His room seemed to be on the second floor of the house from your cursory look out of the window earlier, seemed weird he would have a whole house to himself.

“Oh,” he said, slightly surprised by your question. “My parents travel overseas for work a lot so most of the year I’m here alone.”

“That sucks.” You weren’t sure what else to say to that.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a laugh. “Because they aren’t here I was able to bring you here with no trouble so I’ll consider it about evens out.”

Finishing your sandwich, you put the plate down beside you on the bed. “I really appreciate you saving me.”

Sho waved his hand dismissively. “I told you, I was just returning the favor.” Why were his smiles so cute? You still couldn’t believe you were able to talk successfully being alone in a room with him.

“It also helps that it feels good to help a pretty girl in trouble.”

“What?” Your face flamed. Did he actually just say that?

He chuckled at your frazzled blushing. “Sorry, just wanted to tease you a bit. It’s not often I have super girls in my room.”

He crossed the room, taking your plate and stacking it with his as he peered out the window. “My house is on a busy street so I’m not sure when it’ll be safe for you to leave.”

“Oh… right.” You did have to get home sometime, maintaining your magic form didn’t take too much energy, but doing it for a long period of time would exhaust you, so you couldn’t just stay here forever either.

“I’ll go put our dishes away, I’ll be right back,” Sho told you, once again exiting the room.

His exit gave you room to think. If Teru left in a portal, could you? You had never opened one before but Teru had done it plenty of times, and it was easier than trying to walk home looking like this. Staring at the middle of the room, you tried to concentrate on a large oval shape that would transport you to your room.

Holding your hands out, you tried to visually imagine the magic flowing from your fingertips to right in front of you. Closing your eyes, you channeled your focus, reopening your eyes to see a successful portal– not as pretty or smooth as Teru’s, but it was there.

You probably shouldn’t let Sho see this, he had already seen quite enough of your magical form that you would be nervous every time you saw him in person for a while in worry that he would somehow know who you really were.

Grabbing a pad of paper and pen from his desk, you quickly wrote him a note.

_Sho, thanks for saving me, and the sandwich, Cattail_

As soon as you wrote your apparent superhero name, you wanted to cross it out in annoyance. What were you supposed to write, your real name? Shaking your head in frustration, you put the note on his bed before turning and walking hesitantly through the portal.

Walking through, you found yourself suddenly cramped as you appeared in a shower. Your shower, but still not your room as you were picturing. Opening the shower door, you let your illusion fall and your appearance returned to normal as the sparkles faded away.

At least the shower wasn’t on, that would’ve been much worse. Walking down the hall, you opened the door to your room to find Teru lounging on your bed, eating some candy you had bought the week before.

“So? How was it? Second base or what?” he asked without looking up from his candy.

“Teru!” you exclaimed. “He gave me a sandwich and then I figured out how to do one of those portal things and came back.”

“Ooh, well that’s at least an improvement,” Teru remarked, looking up to meet your eyes. “You didn’t tell him anything?”

“No, of course not,” you emphatically denied. “I feel like my magical girl persona gave me more confidence though. Now that I’m back to normal I’m dreading seeing him at school I’m so embarrassed.”

“He won’t know who you are, the magic helps out with that,” Teru reassured you, although it sounded more condescending than reassuring.

You brushed him off, embarrassed, pulling out your phone and texting Hiro that your side of the monster issue had been solved.

Almost immediately, Hiro replied, concerned that you had been out of contact for a while after the phone call you had made to him earlier in the day.

You typed out your reply, apologizing for not letting him know earlier, leaving out the part about Sho coming to your rescue. With how wound up Hiro had been, you didn’t need him worrying that Sho had discovered your identity or something.

Hiro’s reply came in after a few minutes, suggesting that you two meet sometime soon to discuss why these monster attacks could be coming in more frequently, and you agreed to meet with him after classes tomorrow to talk. Maybe you should drag him to that same ice cream place you took Tsukiya to, wouldn’t hurt to let him de-stress a bit since he always seemed so focused on protecting the city without taking time to relax.

Your phone lit up again before you could put it down, Aika’s usual excited nature coming across even more than usual from her text.

_Look at this NOW! I can’t believe it!_

You clicked on the link Aika had sent, slightly annoyed that she hadn’t bothered to tell you what the big news was in her all-consuming excitement.

The link opened up to a video that you quickly deduced was a news report. Looking at the date the video was posted, you noted that it was just put up today.

“We have obtained some footage of the recent attack at the University from a student’s cellphone.” A put-together young newswoman was speaking into a microphone, standing in front of your school as it was in progress, since there were students roaming around behind her. _“Kain’s attacks usually target structures, but this time he took a hostage who we have identified as university student Sho Ueno.”_

As she talked, a picture of Sho appeared on screen as she announced his name. You could tell it was an old picture as he still had his natural dark hair in it, probably from one of your picture days in high school.

What really surprised you however was when the feed suddenly switched to the same reporter in front of a door, knocking on it.

The door opened to reveal Sho, who seemed somewhat surprised to have a reporter and camera crew outside his door.

 _"Mr. Ueno!"_ The reporter almost shouted, shoving her microphone in his face. _“You were saved by Cattail at your University! Do you know her? Do you know who she really is? What about Orion?”_

Sho looked pretty immediately uncomfortable, but tried to keep himself cool. _"I don’t know anything, so you can go now.”_

The reporter however, was not letting him go, getting right up in his personal space. You felt bad for Sho, it was kind of your fault that he was having to deal with this stuff now.

_“Can we assume that Cattail is your girlfriend then? She sure went out of her way to save you, and we all saw how desperate she was to get you free from that monster!”_

_"S_ _he’s not…”_ Sho trailed off a bit. _“…not my girlfriend.”_

He looked a bit wary of where this conversation was going, and tried to close the door on them, but the woman seemed to jump on this bit of information, shoving a foot in the door to keep him from closing it, pressing herself further into his personal space.

_“So is this a forbidden love, then? You like Cattail but she won’t give you the time of day?”_

Sho’s eyes widened a fraction, and he pushed forward a bit, making the reporter back up and out of his doorway. _“Just leave me alone, and her too. She has to fight monsters all day, you think she needs to worry about this romance drama too?”_

And with that, Sho quickly retreated, closing his door before the reporter could try the same trick again. Not to be deterred, she simply turned to the camera behind her, eyes flashing excitedly.

_“Well there you have it, Sho Ueno and his one-sided crush on Cattail exposed! We can only hope our heroine will someday have eyes for him too!”_

With that, the video ended and you were left sputtering in shock just as another text from Aika came in.

_Can you believe that reporter getting all up in Sho’s face?! I wonder if he does actually like Cattail though…_

You felt a shiver go up your spine at the same time a light flush overtook your cheeks. Could Sho actually like super-you? No, no way, you dismissed the thought with a shake of your head. This was just a nosy reporter trying to make news out of anything, this time at Sho’s expense. Although this did not bode well for your school life if this was any indication of the respect reporters had for people’s privacy. You could only hope that this didn’t create any stalkers after your secret identity, you really didn’t need that on top of everything else.


	6. Chapter 6

“So what was it like before I came along?” you probed, idly stirring the water in your glass with a straw.

Hiro pushed his mop across the floor of the otherwise empty café as he answered. “Attacks happened about twice a week, so similar to how it is now.”

Hiro ended up having a project to work on at school so you had arranged to meet him after his shift at the café was over, telling Aika you couldn’t have a karaoke night because of a headache, which she reluctantly accepted.

“Is Kain always there?” you asked. “He sure seems to like bothering me, at least.”

“Not always. Sometimes he just likes to send those creatures out to attack public spaces. Always where there are a lot of people though.”

“I guess he just likes causing trouble for as many people as possible,” you hummed.

“That’s the thing though,” Hiro asserted. “Barely any casualties. No deaths. Why does he cause so much destruction while leaving victims largely unharmed? The biggest issue we’ve had so far was a broken arm, but he’s caused thousands in damage repair.”

“Maybe he’s just getting started.” Your words didn’t mean to come out so ominous, but Hiro had no response to them, letting them sink in as he continued to mop the floors.

 

It seemed like every day there was a new news report for you to be startled by upon first waking up. Usually sent to you by Aika, who had become rather obsessive about the new superhero phenomenon. Today, it was a news roundtable with different superhero “experts” weighing in.

Weird that someone could claim to be an expert considering superheroes had only been a thing for just over a month.

_“What I’m saying is that they need to be accountable. I mean, it’s obvious Kain won’t tell us his identity, but we should know the identities of those who are supposed to be protecting us,” a middle-aged man argued to his fellow panelists._ You didn’t recognize him, but you also didn’t make a habit of checking out the news, especially now that you were constantly on it.

You rolled your eyes. He just wanted your life to be miserable, didn’t he? You wouldn’t get anything from revealing your identity other than a mess. For once, Teru agreed.

“What an idiot, he thinks anyone would want to reveal their identity because of some speech on TV?” Teru sneered from your shoulder.

“I guess I’ll have to be more careful, really don’t want to end up in a breaking news report.”

Teru scoffed, jumping from your shoulder to your bed. “Breaking news: Cattail revealed to be girl who trips over her own feet and falls in a puddle!”

You turned your head to glare at him. “That was _one time_!”

The rest of the roundtable consisted of the panelists debating whether you and Orion were good for the city or not.

_”We’ve even started to see an influx of what we’re calling hero tourism; visitors coming to our city hoping to get a chance to meet their heroes in person,” the host informed, before the camera feed switched to a video of two very excitable men in their mid- twenties who seemed to fresh out of their mothers’ basements, but not fresh out of a shower. And on their shirts… a portrait of super-you in full anime style and color._

_“We love you Cattail!” one of them shouted at a volume that was too loud considering they had a microphone to speak into._

_“And what would you say to her if you got the chance to meet her?” The off-screen reporter asked them._

_Their excitement somehow became more palpable. You could even visibly see them starting to sweat. The guy who had yet to speak yanked the microphone out of his friend’s hand to answer. “I’d ask her to be my girlfriend! My mom said we’d make the best couple, and she could even come stay with me! My mom makes the best-”_  

“Don’t say a word.” You shut off the video immediately, feeling all color drain from your face as Teru was not even trying not to laugh at you.

“Better hurry, your boyfriend’s waiting,” Teru teased between laughs as he gestured at your phone, video still frozen on the overexcited men, which you quickly closed.

“Can I just let Kain take over the world? I do not want to run into those guys.” A chill went down your spine at the thought.

“Hey, Hiromitsu will probably have it worse. Unlike you, he’s too polite to just run away from fans,” Teru replied.

As if on command, your phone lit up with a text from Hiro and a location where he would meet you to deal with a monster.

“No! No, I’m not going! I don’t want to be kidnapped by those guys!”

Teru simply flicked a paw and the usual wings appeared on your back just as a portal appeared in front of you.

“Better change now before people see a flying _normal_ girl.”

Grumbling under your breath, you allowed yourself to change just as Teru sent you through the portal.

Looking around, you found yourself in the middle of a department store. Casting your gaze around the store, you were just fast enough to catch a familiar blonde boy as he was flung backwards in your direction.

Hiro eased off of you, relief clear in his face at your well-timed entrance. “It’s a bull, be careful.”

Before you could ask any further questions, turning around the corner in front of you by an aisle of stuffed animals was definitely a bull. About three times the size one should normally be, dark green and with five eyes, it looked like something a kindergartener drew come to life.

It brushed its hooves on the ground, head reared and five (why couldn’t it just have the normal two?) eyes fixed themselves squarely on you and Hiro.

You must have looked fairly perturbed, as Hiro turned to you with a more hero-like expression than you would ever be capable of making. “Don’t worry, now that you’re here we can take it down easy! No Kain in sight.”

Switching his focus back to the bull, he spoke up again quietly, as if to keep the bull from charging at that second. “If you can stun it, I can probably cut it in two.”

As he said that, his sword materialized in his hand and he grasped the handle with determination. His confidence gave you a bit more yourself, though at least half your mind was still imagining how trampled you’d be if that bull got his hooves near you.

Hiro moved into position stealthily behind a shelf of magazines, some of them with your face on them, which you chose to ignore.

Taking a shaky breath, you stepped up to face the getting-ready-to-charge bull.

“Hey!” you called unsteadily. “Green is a bad color for you!” you shouted with as much confidence as you could force yourself to look like you had in that moment.

“Nice one, make fun of his fashion sense…” Teru remarked, and you turned to retort when he continued. “Spoke too soon, looks like you offended him more than I thought! Watch out!”

Startled, you turned back to face the bull only to see that it was in mid-charge towards you, in seconds it would be upon you. Or rather, its hooves would be.

“Oh no, oh no,” you chanted, not fully ready to be trampled.

“Weapon,” Teru hummed in your ear from his perch on your shoulder, before disappearing with a laugh.

Summoning your weapon faster than you ever had before, you barely had time before the bull was on you.

With a scream that was more in terror than in confidence, your staff radiated with an unstable energy that you then sent at the bull, meters away from you at that point.

Panting from exertion, you watched as the bull was sent flying onto his back. At that, Hiro darted out, sword at the ready.

You watched as Hiro jumped at the bull with a battle cry, aiming his sword for a clean slice… before you were grabbed from behind and dazed as you were pulled into a portal.

“Shhh,” a sultry voice in your ear purred. “We’re only one floor up and I don’t want space boy to interrupt us.”

Looking around you gaged he was telling the truth, this was a floor up on the department store, although this floor was untouched by the bull you guessed by the lack of dents in anything. You couldn’t hear anything from downstairs so you could only assume the bull was done for by now.

You were in a back corner of the store, an old-looking camera nearby in two pieces. Well you weren’t complaining that this encounter wouldn’t be on video since the entertainment news really didn’t need to get their hands on this potential footage.

A floor down, you could hear Hiro calling out for you. You tried to break away and answer, but Kain wouldn’t loosen his hand that was covering your mouth.

“If I take my hand off of you, you’d scream, and I don’t want him crashing in here.” He turned you around, an unidentifiable gleam in his red eyes.

You shook your head from side to side furiously. It was getting awkward to breathe through your nose, and once he let you go you could just kick him where it hurts and run away.

Kain titled his head as he looked at you, cheeky smirk rising on his lips. “I can never say no to you. But no screaming.”

He slowly removed his hand from your mouth and you had a momentary panic. What were you supposed to do now?

Distantly, you heard Hiro yell your superhero name again, and without thinking, you called his back.

“Orio-” Once again Kain cut you off, this time with a quick swipe of his finger along the seam of your lips. At once you found yourself unable to open your mouth, as if there was superglue between your lips.

You had a hand over your lips, feeling some smooth material on them, in shock and unable to convey anything other than confusion and panic.

Kain, on the other hand, was staring at you, amusement in his eyes as he began to take slow steps backwards.

“You insisted on cutting our time short, and I didn’t want to leave empty handed.” With a short wave of his hand, a familiar black portal appeared behind him. “But I’ll see you again soon, kitty cat.”

His sharp red eyes met yours for one more short moment before he turned to the portal.

You should smack him, do something… You had your staff still in your hand, but couldn’t bring yourself to charge him.

And then he was gone, and you fell to your knees both in shock and from your exhaustion catching up to you. As the portal closed, the substance covering your lips lifted, and you took deep breaths of air in to try and make up for your lungs nearly collapsing there.

“Are you okay?” Hiro’s voice was in your ear as he placed his hands on your shoulders to help steady you. “Do you need me to carry you?”

You shook your head, trying to shake away the fog that had descended on your mind as well.

“I’ll be fine…” you replied, standing up with Hiro’s help. “We should probably leave, I don’t want reporters too come,” you spoke weakly.

“Alright,” Hiro agreed, before waving his sword in some sort of pattern, a pristine portal appearing before the two of you.

You turned to him in surprise. “I didn’t know you could do portals.”

He smiled sheepishly, looking away for a second before meeting your eyes. “After you did it, I begged Sora to show me how. Don’t want to be relying on you for everything!”

You grinned back at him. Good that he learned how, because you were so tired that you didn’t think you had it in you to make any more portals.

You stumbled in, Hiro right behind you as you found yourself in your bedroom.

You both let your disguises fall and the blonde faded into the familiar dark hair of Hiro.

“What happened?” he asked as you flopped back onto your bed, hair no longer pink and adorned with cat ears.

“Kain grabbed me. He, uh…” You really didn’t know how, and largely didn’t want to mention the trick Kain had pulled on you, but Hiro seemed to run with the information you had already given him.

“Kain was there” Hiro fumed, pacing around your room. “So he’s just taunting us? Sending his monsters at us while he hides and watches?”

“I don’t know why all the monsters are so weird looking too,” you lamented.

“I just want to know why he’s doing all of this but any time I try to ask he forces me into a fight,” Hiro added. “I’m just glad nobody’s been killed yet.”

You were only really catching parts of what Hiro was saying, mind fading as you closed your eyes and felt ready for a nap.

“And I… oh.” Hiro noticed your current state, but not that you were still slightly conscious. “I guess she isn’t used to this yet.”

You felt a hand stroke your hair, before pulling away. “Get some rest, (Name).”

And then you really did fall asleep before you heard anything more.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter done! Also, if anyone needs a headcannon for what Teru looks like, his appearance is loosely based off of Star Guardian Janna's animal companion Zephyr.

“Please?” Aika begged, seemingly one step from getting down on her knees to beg you. “This idol festival only happens once a year, and last year I was too sick to go!”

You vaguely remembered that, last year you were just happy you got out of going with her last year, but this time it seemed you weren’t as lucky. And she really was sick last year, not much would keep Aika from anything idol-related.

“But it’s so crowded…” you weakly argued.

Aika’s pretty fake-looking sad face turned almost too quickly into determination, and a sly smirk that you didn’t like the look of.

“Remember how I lent you my notes for the test last week since you missed class because you were returning that lost cat you found?”

“Yeah…” You almost forgot that you had told Aika that dumb lie. It was all you could think of to text her when she messaged you asking why you weren’t in class, and somehow telling her that you had just finished beating up a wolf monster, and oh yeah you were also one of those superheroes she obsesses about did not seem like a good idea.

“There’s another test coming up and I think you’ll be needing my notes again…” she teased.

“Aika…” you groaned, clearly seeing where this conversation was heading.

“I do so many things for you, so can you just do this one teeny thing for me?” she pleaded.

“The only teeny thing around here is your self-restraint if you get close to any of those idols,” you retorted.

Aika spoke your name sternly, before the puppy dog eyes returned. “Please!”

She did lend you her notes and, and she was your best friend and all. Letting out an internal sigh, you relented and agreed to her request.

“Yay!” she squealed. “We’ll have so much fun!”

You rolled your eyes playfully as the two of you entered your classroom. You still felt a bit bad that you hadn’t told Aika your huge secret, but her track record of keeping secrets was not the best so you’d just have to make sure not to slip up in front of her, or anyone else for that matter.

You sat down next to each other as your professor took his place at the podium, shuffling some of his papers around before beginning attendance. 

“Alright, all here,” he nodded at the class. “Now, first order of business, I have volunteered this class for a little extra credit project.” 

There were groans around the class that he then had to try and silence. 

“What’s the project? Giving old people sponge baths?” Aika whispered to you. 

“As you are aware, it is a new school year, and as such, we have some new students. And these students need buddies to help them with any questions they have. Therefore, I am having you all assigned as buddies, and anyone who does not comply will lose three grade levels in the course.” 

Loud protests rang out in the class. You wanted to protest too! You had school _and_ superheroing to juggle, you really didn’t need to add being a _school buddy_ to that list.

“If you don’t participate, I will be lowering your grade. I already received approval from the school to do this.” 

“What the heck,” Aika protested. “I don’t want to babysit some new student... unless he’s hot,” she added. 

“I feel like with our luck, we’d get guys like on that news report you sent me.” There was still a worry at the back of your mind that eventually those guys would find you, which was not a pleasant thought.

“Eww!” Aika replied. “Gross. I felt so bad for Cattail when I saw those weirdos!” 

You felt bad for Cattail too... just more things for you to worry about when you were going around transformed. 

“Oh stop complaining. Class is cancelled today because we are having the new students come in to be paired with you right now. I have the list right here.” He shuffled around his papers some more, producing one as the door opened and an overexcited student tour guide walked in, followed by a group of what you assumed were the new students. 

“No hot guys...” Was Aika’s disappointed remark from beside you, but the same couldn’t be said for the girls. 

The boys were all chattering about one girl who was near the front of the group, one of the first ones to walk in. 

She had strawberry blonde hair, looking professionally dyed and curled, which fell down to her waist, and what looked like a designer pink ruffled midriff shirt and jeans that had more gems on them than you’d seen in jewelry stores. 

“Those jeans are like two thousand dollars!” Aika hissed at you. “I saw them in last month’s Fashion Monthly!” 

“She looks...” You were struggling to come up with a word to describe her as you watched her casually shove a girl who was standing just slightly in front of her. “I just hope we don’t get her.” 

“Yup,” Aika agreed. “She seems like a nightmare.” 

Your professor began calling out names and their new student pairings. Aika was called before you and got assigned a mousy-looking girl who seemed like an average nervous new student. 

“Good luck,” Aika whispered as she walked down the aisle to the front to meet her partner. 

You heard your name called finally, snapping you out of your bored glancing at Aika and her partner as they talked.

“You are being paired with Tamari Teiko.” 

You felt like leaving as the girl in the apparently expensive pants stepped forward, looking around to see who she got assigned to. 

You stood up, walking to the front apprehensively. Maybe she would be nice. Just because she looked high maintenance, it didn’t mean that she- 

“Hurry up, it’s not like you need to walk carefully in those ugly shoes of yours,” she hissed, eyes narrowing in distaste. 

Never mind then, this was going to be as miserable as you thought. 

 

“She ran you around everywhere?” Aika asked as you two were walking home together, just leaving the school gates. 

“Yeah, kept wanting to go to a new place as soon as we got somewhere. Had a hissy fit and stormed off when I refused to get in line for coffee so she didn’t have to. Tried to give me a black card and everything.” 

“Black card...” Aika pondered. “Actually, I think I know why she seemed familiar when they called her name earlier.” 

“Well?” You raised an eyebrow. 

“Her family must own Teiko! You know, the mega-brand. They just opened that new mall downtown. And they’re sponsoring the idol festival this weekend.” 

“Oh.” Now that you thought about it, that made sense. How else would she be able to afford two thousand-dollar jeans? 

“Better not make her mad,” Aika teased. “Her daddy might sue you for her pain and suffering!”

You laughed. “I know you’re joking, but I’m half afraid she’ll actually do that.” 

“It should be fine!” Aika waved off your concern. “This buddy thing is only for a month, then you’ll be free of her.” 

“I guess you’re right. Just gotta survive until then. With how she was today, I doubt she wants any interaction with me for the rest of the month anyways.” 

 

“A buddy?” Teru sputtered through bouts of laughter. 

You rolled your eyes. “Well if you didn’t disappear on me all day yesterday, you’d have already known.” 

“Sorry, your class are too boring for me,” Teru replied dismissively, laying back on your bed with his front paws reclined behind his head. 

“You’re lucky that I don’t report you to the magical animal companion board and have your license revoked!” you threatened. 

Teru rolled onto his side and laughed. “There is no _board of animal companions_ , stupid.” 

“Well if you’re not coming, I’m going to school,” you huffed, grabbing your bag and heading to the door. 

“Hope you don’t get sent on another coffee run!” Teru joked as you left your room. 

He can forget about you buying him any ice cream for a long while, the little jerk! 

You walked out of your house, not really wanting to go, but not wanting a severely reduced final grade. Maybe she’ll ignore you. 

You were halfway to school in your depressed state when your name was called. 

You tried but failed to supress your surprise when a familiar head of bleached blonde hair approached you. 

“Uh, hi Sho...” you trailed off. Why did he have to catch you off guard right now? Why wasn’t Aika here to do the talking for you? 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Mind if I walk with you?” he asked. 

“Sure.” Your brain couldn’t really think of a better response. You weren't really that used to talking to Sho, making you a more nervous than natural conversationalist. You didn’t remember seeing him walk to school the same way as you before too, so you had no way of seeing this coming. 

“I heard your class got stuck with the buddy thing this year,” he remarked. 

“It’s a _thing_?” 

“Yeah,” Sho answered with a laugh. “Last year my class got paired with the older students. Every year they pick two classes to buddy up.” 

“Oh... wish I had heard about that before now.” 

“Got a bad partner?” Sho asked, smiling sympathetically at your silence. “I got stuck with a 40-year old guy who was returning to school after a long time away. All he did was lecture me about how people my age were ruining everything.” 

“For a whole month?” you inquired. 

Sho laughed, adjusting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Yeah. For someone who hated people our age, he was super insistent on making me meet up with him at school just to complain at me more. As if it was my fault that his group project partner slacked off.” 

You stifled a giggle behind your hand. “I’m hoping mine won’t be that bad, but we’ll see.”

“Did you get a grumpy 40-year-old too? Thinning hair, always wears the same vest every day? I might know him,” Sho joked. 

You laughed. “No. Mine is apparently the heiress to Teiko.” 

Sho winced. “I heard about her. The one who wore a sparkly miniskirt the first day?” 

“Did she? I hadn’t heard of her until now.” 

“Yeah, it was all my friends were talking about that day. I haven’t seen her myself though,” he replied with a shrug. 

Wow, Sho really did have a very different social circle than you. You couldn’t imagine why he was walking to school with you instead of them. But you had to admit he was a really decent guy, especially when he went out of his way to bring super-you to his house when you passed out that one time. Not that he knew he was currently walking to school with Cattail. 

You walked past the school gates, finding yourself enjoying chatting with Sho. He really didn’t seem to reflect the behavior of the group he typically hung out with, who were known to be very picky with who they allowed into their group. You recalled a time when Aika said hi to Sho while you two walked past him and his friends and received some dirty looks from his friends when Sho had said hi back. 

A girl’s voice called your name and you both turned, expecting Aika to be coming over to you, but instead you found Tamari bounding over to you, looking happier than you thought she was even capable of. You couldn’t understand why she had done an attitude 360... 

...until she practically ran you over to get to Sho. So that was what she was happy about. 

“Hi, I’m Tamari, and she’s my buddy,” she chirped, not even glancing in your direction. “I’m sure she’s busy with class or whatever, but I need help finding a classroom. You’ll help me right? Please?” 

She was talking so fast and in such a baby voice. Other than his eyes momentarily meeting yours, Sho showed no sign of being taken aback, unlike you. 

“Oh, I-” 

“You will?” She cut him off. “Thanks, let’s go!” 

She didn’t let Sho get a word in edgewise, dragging him off into the building in front of you before you had a chance to protest and help him. 

“What was that?” 

You turned to Hiro as he approached you from behind, looking confused. 

“I got assigned a buddy and she’s some crazy rich girl. I was talking to Sho and she ran over and dragged him off under a guise of _showing her around_.” 

“Yeah, I saw that,” Hiro remarked. “I felt bad for Sho.” 

“Watch out, she might come grab you too, you’re cute enough!” you teased him. 

Hiro turned his head away from you, cheeks looking more than a bit pink. “Thanks.” 

Now you felt embarrassed. You didn’t expect him to take you so seriously. “Well let’s just get out of here before she comes back!” 

“Fair enough.” Was all Hiro said. Was he still embarrassed? 

You tried to peer at his face, but he started walking ahead of you, denying you the chance to check out if he truly was blushing or not. 

You followed him, smiling to yourself. Hiro could be uptight, but he could be cute sometimes. His friends on the other hand... 

You heard them before you saw them. 

“Mitsu!” 

Hiro stiffened a bit, an awkward look on his tall frame. Why was he even friends with those people? They were always so loud and rude. Was this just how guy friendships were? You and Aika had been friends for so long that you didn’t even bother to try and make other friends beyond classroom acquaintances. 

Hiro glanced back at you. “You can head to class if you don’t want to deal with those guys.” 

Nodding and saying goodbye, you turned down a different hallway, resolving to ask him why his friends were so odd another time. 

"No fair, Mitsu! We want to meet your girlfriend properly!” One of them protested. 

“Stop it, we’re not dating!” You heard Hiro protest as you walked out of earshot of the loud group of boys. 

“Tamari...” You heard a new voice. Were you just going to deal with everything awkward today? 

You stopped short of turning the corner when the voices continued. 

“But Sho,” Tamari whined slowly, really dragging out the last part of his name. “I’m pretty, rich, and did I mention pretty? You have to go out with me!” 

“I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Sho sounded like he was doing his best to diffuse the situation. 

“Why not?” Tamari screamed, assumedly stomping her high-heeled shoe by the accompanying noise you heard. 

“I, uh...” You’d never heard Sho sound so awkward before. He sighed. “I like someone else, Tamari.” 

Sho liked somebody? Was it the popular girl whose name you forgot with the pink highlights in her hair? Was it that other girl in his group who always wore her hair in a ponytail? Was it–

“Who!?” Tamari demanded. “ _Nobody_ is better than me! Who is it?” She sounded ready to explode. 

Hiro’s friends back the way you had come from sounded like a better option than being near this any longer, and you turned to retreat. 

“I like Cattail.” 

There was a loud slap from around the corner. “That skanky cat girl? Ugh, I won’t let her have you!”

There was a stomping in the other direction, and you heard an annoyed sigh. 

“Why did I even tell her that...” 

You were too late in realizing the voice you heard was gradually coming closer, as Sho came around the corner. 

“Oh, hey.” He looked annoyed, but upon seeing you, allowed his lips to rise in a smile as he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna assume you heard all that?” he asked. 

“Um...” Should you admit or deny it? Before you had a chance to think more, Sho continued. 

“She really is a handful. Listen, could you not tell anyone about the Cattail thing?”

“Is it true?” You couldn’t stop yourself from asking. You heard the rumors, but you thought they were just rumors. You didn’t want to know but at the same time you really did. 

“Uh...” Sho cast his eyes downward, looking awkward, which was a new look for him. “It’s true. But please don’t tell anyone, they’ll just think it’s stupid.” 

“I don’t think it’s stupid...” you spoke, volume just above a whisper. 

“I don’t even know if I’ll see her again,” he said. “She has more important things to do than go on a date with me.” 

His sad eyes met yours, and then he continued walking past you with a serious look on his face, hands in his pockets. You couldn’t think of anything to say to stop him as you turned, so you watched him walk down the empty hallway and away from you. 


	8. Chapter 8

“I’m feeling faint, you should just leave me here,” you protested from your spot behind a tree at the edge of the private, gated outdoor park. 

“Stop it!” Aika replied with a laugh. “You look fine! Everyone here is going to be dressed like this so you’d look weirder if you were dressed normally!” 

You reluctantly came out from behind the tree, revealing your bright red t-shirt with the words _Tsukiya’s_ _Wifey_  in glittery white letters. Aika had insisted you wear it and had the same one on herself. 

“I told you I got a great discount on these!” Aika implored. “And it’s way more fun to both wear the same shirt! We’ll be like twins!” she said, gesturing to her own glittery shirt. 

“Fine,” you grumbled as Aika linked her arm with yours, turning to head through the gate, showing your passes to the security stationed there, and then in the direction of the concert stages. 

“Oh my god, your shirts!” You turned in the direction of the voice to see a very excited teenaged girl, her shirt covered by a picture of the three members of Starfall together, posing in three piece-suits without dress shirts, leaving a large portion of their chests revealed. “Where did you get those?” 

Aika told her the name of the website, turning back to you as the girl walked way. “See? I told you these would be a hit!” 

You didn’t really have anything nice to say to that so you kept your mouth shut and took in the scenery, if it could even be called that. 

The grassy area you had found yourself in was huge, and there were two stages at opposite ends of the park, which were already crowded, although the concerts were not set to start for another half-hour. 

There was also a merchandise stand that was mobbed with largely female fans coming away with keychains, fans and other items with pictures of various idols on them. 

You spotted shirts with other embarrassing words on them... _Akira’s #1 Fan, Marry Me Naoki_ … there seemed to be a marriage theme going around. 

“Okay, Sparkle Girls first!” Aika cheered, dragging you towards one of the stages, which had begun playing a music video from the group on a screen as an opening act. 

“Move!” 

You were startled by a piercing screech coming from the front of the crowd. 

“Uh oh,” Aika was first to spot what was going on. 

“What?” you pressed. 

“We might want to see the other band instead,” Aika replied, finger pointed towards the unfolding scene just ahead of you. 

“That’s my spot!” 

You felt a sudden urge to shrink away as you watched your school buddy shove another girl from their front and center seat in front of the stage. 

Tamari was dressed similarly to you and Aika, except her version of the _Wifey_  shirt was decorated with what looked to be real crystals. She completed the look with a pair of tight black short-shorts and glittery black pumps, her hair looking freshly curled and nails freshly painted. 

“No way, I was here first!” the other girl shouted, shoving back at Tamari. 

The fight was getting loud, which brought over a security guard, who pushed his way through the crowd of girls and straight to the action. 

“What is going on here?” the burly guard demanded, and Tamari wasted no time in answering him. 

“She pushed me!” Tamari exclaimed, index finger pointed at the other girl who was still fuming. “I feel unsafe, so she should be removed!” 

As soon as the guard saw her, he stiffened up, arms at his sides. “Miss Teiko...” 

“Well?” Tamari pouted at him. “Get to it already!” 

“Yes, miss...” the guard acquiesced, marching over to take a hold of the other girl’s arm. 

“Wait, but she-” the girl protested as she was dragged past the crowd, who silently watched her, and Tamari smirked proudly as she settled herself into her new prime seat. 

“Wow,” Aika said. “I don’t want her to see us and kick us out for wearing the same shirt as her!” 

You two quickly turned tail and rushed over to the other band, not wanting to deal with the bratty Teiko heiress. As much as you’d like to not be here, you didn’t want to ruin Aika’s day. 

The other band, Seahorse, wasn’t too bad, despite their funny name, so your first concert of the day went by just fine. Especially since there were no catfights over the front seats, unlike the concert at the other end of the venue. 

Aika had been excitable at the first concert but got practically insane when it was getting closer to Stafall’s time to perform. 

She had made you line up with her an hour early to get good seats for the concert, which landed you in the third row. Tamari, of course, was front row center again, and you kept slouched in your seat, hoping she wouldn’t notice you. 

An instrumental version of one of Starfall’s songs played as the three boys emerged from off stage to cries of their names as they took their spots center stage. All three boys were wearing the same outfit in different colors; Long white pants and a white jacket with short sleeves but a long tail covered a low-cut shirt that the boys each wore in a different color, Naoki in green, Akira in blue, and Tsukiya center stage in bright red. 

“We heard that you lined up early to see us!” Naoki announced to a resounding cheer from the audience. Aika, along with many of the other girls, stood up and screamed. 

“So we’ll work extra hard to make this a good time for you!” Tsukiya added with a wink to yet more cries from the girls around you. 

“He’s so hot!” Aika squealed in your ear. 

Tsukiya hadn’t noticed you yet, at least you didn’t think so. It was awkward enough watching him perform and knowing all these girls would kill you if they knew you had hung out with him alone. 

They started out with an upbeat song that had some difficult dance moves. You had to give the boys credit, you would not be able to do a quarter of what they were doing right now.  

The concert went on without any games that required audience members, which you were grateful for. Finally, it was time for the halfway break in the show. 

“We have to do a costume change, but we’ll be back soon!” Akira said. 

“And you’ll have to stick around because the costumes are really sexy!” Naoki added, sticking his tongue out. 

“Do you think it’ll have feathers? Sexy costumes always have feathers!” Aika leaned in to whisper to you. 

“What?” You furrowed your eyebrows. Where did Aika even get these ideas? 

You were about to say something else to her, eyes still on the stage as Tsukiya waved to the audience.  

“Don’t miss me too much!” he called out to the crowd, but you found that his eyes were directed straight at yours for the few moments before he turned to leave the stage, waving to the audience as he went. 

“Okay, everyone else has a fan here, so I need to get one!” Aika announced. 

“Okay...” you acquiesced, standing up as she did. 

“No!” she protested, putting a hand on your shoulder to gently push you back into your seat. “If we both leave, someone will take our seats! And I did not wait in line for an hour to lose my hard-earned seat!” 

Maybe if someone stole your seats you could go home sooner. But you allowed her to push you into sitting down again, unwilling to incur Aika’s wrath when it came to idols. 

“I’ll be back soon!” And with that, she set off towards the still-crowded merchandise stand. 

You pulled out your phone, planning to play around on it until Aika got back. 

Just as you opened an app, you heard screaming. And not the screaming you had been hearing all day from overexcited fangirls. You assumed it was still the fangirls’ screams, but they sure didn’t sound happy. 

You slowly put your phone back in your bag, hoping it was another fight over a seat. 

...and watched as your hopes were promptly crushed when something that looked like a giant orange lizard on two legs stormed out from behind the stage. 

Another shrill scream. “It’s got Tsukiya!” 

Your eyes darted to one of the monster’s large clawed hands, which held what looked to be an unconscious Tsukiya in its grip. 

This was not a great situation. People were running in every direction as the creature came forward, forcing you to flee your seat with them as the lizard turned towards the seating area, crushing chairs underneath his giant feet. 

You had to act fast, the creature was around thirty feet tall, and if it forgot about Tsukiya and dropped him, he wouldn’t be getting out of the situation unharmed. 

With that thought in mind, you began running with the crowd, looking for a place to split off and transform without being seen. 

You purposefully lagged behind in your running, noting the empty merchandise stand the workers had vacated. Looking back at the crowd, you watched Tamari, near the front, trip a girl near her and then continue forward. 

Ugh. You didn’t have time to go deal with that, so hopefully the girl hadn’t somehow broken both legs in her very short fall to the ground and would be fine. 

You hadn’t seen Aika either, but you had seen her run for CD release events before and you hoped this would be no different in terms of her use of her running abilities. You forced yourself to put your worry for your friend at the back of your mind, climbing over the counter of the merchandise stand and ducking down to hide beside the boxes of fans and whatever else. 

“Teru needs a pager or something,” you grumbled, allowing the familiar feeling of longer hair, cat ears and exposed thighs wash over you as you switched to your super-form. 

Peeking out of the stand, you saw the monster has made its way through the seating area, Tsukiya still in its grip. 

Hesitantly, you climbed out of the stand; guess Teru was skipping this one. Little brat. 

“Finally!” 

You jolted in shock as your shoulder was suddenly grabbed from behind. Turning around, you were faced with a balding middle-aged man with white teeth and what looked like an expensive suit. 

You stared at him dumbly. What did he even want? You had some pretty important business to get to. 

He wasted no time laying into you. “Really took your time with this one, didn’t you? Don’t care that one of the biggest pop idols ever is in mortal danger! Nice to see your priorities are finally in order!” 

He was red-faced by the end of his shouting, eyes bulging out in anger. 

You stepped back a bit, shocked. Who talked to someone they didn’t know like that? 

“Well? Get up there and save him! You don’t want to be responsible for the millions of dollars it would cost to cancel their country-wide tour on account of one of them being killed by a giant lizard!” 

What was his deal, and for that matter who was he? You bit back what you wanted to say in return and instead turned your back to him and began to run towards the lizard monster and unconscious pop star in its grip. Screaming back at him wasn’t really worth Tsukiya’s life. 

You heard the guy yelling at you as you departed, but you shut him out in order to focus on the task ahead of you. 

“Hey!” Yelling at the giant weird creatures had worked out for you before, so why stop now? 

The lizard thing ceased destroying chairs for the moment and turned its head towards you, revealing sharp teeth you didn’t take notice of until now. You really didn’t want to be lizard food. 

You barely had time to dive out of the way as it swung its foot, sending a wave of chairs and dirt your way. 

You couldn’t go on the offense as it rained blows from its feet and available clawed fist. It was too late for you as you realized at the last second that it had backed you into a dead end by the outside fence by the stage. With nowhere to go, there was nothing you could do as it easily reached down and grabbed you in its clawed hand. 

Your arms were pinned to your side, leaving you unable to summon your staff to channel your powers. And the pain from being squeezed was making it hard for you to focus on much. 

You attempted to struggle in its grasp, but as you weren’t some sort bodybuilder and your magic only gave you slightly enhanced athletic capabilities, you couldn’t break its hold. 

You looked over to Tsukiya, who was limp in the monster’s other hand. You tried shouting his name a few times, with no response. He was out cold, and you had no way of helping him. Just what did this monster want with the two of you anyways? 

You then turned your head to what sounded like a crackling sound as a portal appeared out of thin air behind the monster. It looked like Kain had come personally to mock you before he finally got tired of you and let his creature eat you. 

Looking away from the portal so as to not give Kain the satisfaction of just how hopeless you were sure you looked right now, you cursed your predicament. “You suck, Teru!” 

“...Oh, is that so?” 

You yelped at the sudden weight on your head and voice in your ear. 

“Seems like someone wants to continue their lizard hand massage!” 

“Teru!” You knew his voice anywhere. “What are you-” 

“You’re lucky I was at Hiromitsu’s place with Sora and he saw this on the news and wanted to come help you,” Teru informed you. 

You turned back to the portal that Teru had come out of just as Hiro and Sora appeared out of it. As Hiro leaped out of it and onto the ground, the portal closed up behind him, Sora at his side. It would be nice to have a supportive animal companion, you couldn’t help but think. Hiro called out your hero name as he saw you, dashing over to stop at the monster’s feet as it growled, squeezing you tighter. 

“I said you’d be fine, but he insisted,” Teru lamented with a shrug. 

“Can you just help us?” you wheezed; the monster’s grip was too tight now, restricting your airflow. 

“Us?” Teru looked over to the monster’s other hand. “Oh yeah. Idol boy, I forgot. Maybe _he’ll_  buy me snacks for helping him.” 

You were seeing red but were promptly distracted as the arm that was holding you was now loosening its grip and falling to the ground, and you fell along with it. You shrieked, closing your eyes as you fell. Why were you so bad in these split-second moments? 

“Got you!” 

You heard Hiro’s voice as you landed softly. At least softer than it would have been if you hadn’t landed safely in his arms. 

“Hi-” you started before correcting yourself. “Orion!” 

Hiro looked relieved as he laughed. “I don’t think anyone is around to hear you say my real name.” 

You really appreciated having your hero friend come in the nick of time to save you, but being in his arms as the seconds went by was making you embarrassed. “Um, Hiro...?” 

Hiro’s magically-changed blue eyes widened a fraction, immediately letting you down, looking bashful. 

“Are you gonna kiss or go kill that thing already?” Teru snipped, landing on Hiro’s head. 

“Teru!” Sora tweeted in protest. “Don’t tease Hiro! He’s still embarrassed about when his friends called her his girlfriend!” 

“Sora!” Hiro shouted, cheeks burning even redder than they already were from Teru’s remark. 

His magical bird has tried to come to her companion’s defense, which had resulted in Hiro being even more embarrassed. You were also embarrassed, was Hiro bothered that his friends thought you were dating? You felt kind of bad now. 

 Sora looked from Hiro to you, looking sheepish as she realized that she had said that in front of you. “Sorry, Hiro...” 

And then you all had to move out of the way as the giant now one-armed lizard monster thrashed around in rage and pain from its injury. Tsukiya was still safe at the moment, but it didn’t look like it would last with the monster going crazy like that. You turned to face Hiro. 

“Can you do that thing again? Or just distract him so I can rescue Tsukiya?” 

“Do you know him?” Hiro asked, puzzled. 

“Uh...” You brain replayed memories of you talking to him in his dressing room and getting ice cream together. “He’s in Aika’s favorite band,” you said lamely, which seemed to be good enough for Hiro, because he didn’t ask any more questions and instead readied his sword. 

“Okay... go!” You shouted, loud enough that it also attracted the monster’s attention back to you as you ran around it, careful to not be trampled as Hiro prepared himself for another sneak attack. 

You kept your eyes on Hiro as you ran around. He prepared himself for another jump, though you weren’t too worried, Hiro was very capable, and this monster didn’t seem that smart. You refused to stop and think how it reflected on your intelligence that you were so easily captured by a big dumb lizard. 

Hiro’s jump was elegant as his sword made a clean sweep through the lizard’s wrist, severing its hand completely. He quickly dodged the falling hand and got out of your way as you dove forward to catch Tsukiya, who was falling rapidly, you assumed still unconscious because you didn’t hear any screaming from him. Any noises at all, really. 

There was a sudden increase in weight that you were glad super-you could handle as you smoothly caught him in your arms. 

“Get him out of here!” Hiro shouted, Sora by his side as she landed on his shoulder, creating big blue bird wings on his back. “I’ll handle this!” 

Well he clearly had this handled. Giving a nod since you had no hands free at the moment, you turned around and ran, passing Teru, who had been observing the situation.  

“Go help Hiro!” you scolded him, and he scoffed at you, but doing as you asked, he flew over to Hiro to assist, and you looked back to where you were going, unconscious pop star in your arms. 

You looked over to the exit gates, which were not too far away now. Everyone had evacuated by now but you knew the news trucks would arrive soon, so you ran back to that merchandise stand as fast as you could. As you vaulted over it, still carrying Tsukiya, you looked down to see his brown eyes open and focused on you. When had he woken up? 

“...Cattail?” he asked softly and you almost dropped him in surprise. 

He got out of your arms, both of you sitting on the floor of the merchandise stand, where you were both surrounded by items with his face on them. 

“Sorry,” you said quickly, not sure what you were apologizing for. “I had to get you away from that monster.” 

“You saved me?” His eyes went wide in surprise. “Thanks, Cattail.” 

The sweet smile he sent you was one you had seen on posters at Aika’s house, but in person it was flustering you. You already didn’t know how to talk to him when you were just you, but being Cattail just made things way more awkward. You should probably just leave now. 

“Um, I need to go back and help...” you trailed off, standing up and climbing out of the shop. 

“Wait!” Tsukiya had climbed out after you, grabbing your arm. 

You reluctantly looked back at him, both of you out in the open now after leaving the stand. Couldn’t he just let you go before you did anything stupid in front of him? Well, he didn’t know who you really were so you’d be fine there, but if possible you’d like to get out of here without messing up worse than getting grabbed by a giant reptile. 

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m grateful,” he said, the sincere expression on his handsome face making your cheeks flare up. Brushing some of his deep red hair form his face, he added, “You’re really pretty in person.” 

“What?” you replied dumbly. You were practically frozen with embarrassment. 

“Sorry,” he laughed. “I... just, thanks for saving me, Cattail.” 

His smile kept you staring at his face and dulled your brain processing just enough that he was able to lean forward and kiss you without resistance. 

The kiss lasted only a few seconds, and you were too stunned to close your eyes like he had, and then he pulled back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from that monster.” 

“Uh...” Your blank brain attempted a restart. “Thanks... I’ll, uh, go.” 

And with that, you ran away from the pop idol. You felt a mix of emotions; embarrassment mostly covering up the giddiness you felt underneath. You were willing to admit you didn’t hate being kissed by him but... your mind was just a mess right now. 

“Did you fall and hit your head?” Teru asked when he saw you sprinting over. “You look weird.” 

You ignored him as you walked right by him to Hiro and Sora who were also watching your arrival, Teru flying beside you as you walked to them. 

“The lizard monster?” you inquired. It was nowhere to be seen, but the damage it caused sure was. 

“We took care of it!” Hiro replied with a smile. “You got that guy to safety?” 

“Yep,” you agreed, leaving it at that. You couldn’t even think about Tsukiya right now and maintain your current calm. 

“Well then, we’d better go,” Hiro said, gesturing to the news trucks parked at the entrance, as well as the crowd that had now gathered here of both attendees and onlookers. 

You were about to suggest a portal out of here, but then remembered Aika and groaned. 

“Are you okay?” Hiro asked, concern in his tone as he approached you. 

“Yeah... um, could you do me a favor, Hiro?” 

 

“I rescued this girl and wanted to ensure she got out safely!” Hiro announced to the large group of people as he opened the exit gate. 

Hiro sounded super wooden in his delivery, you assumed he hadn’t taken drama in high school. But the crowd ate it up regardless, eager to have any comment from the elusive Orion who avoided the press. 

Aika called out your name as Hiro let you down from his arms. Sora had suggested it would seem more like he had saved you if he carried you out, and you reluctantly agreed as the blonde super-boy had picked you up and carried you here. 

You met Aika halfway, allowing her to freak out and hug you slightly too tight. “I thought you were dead! Or turned into lizard food and eaten!” 

Wouldn’t both of those options mean you were dead? You patted Aika’s back awkwardly. Why did she always have to get like this? 

“Aika, can we go?” you asked her as you watched Hiro make his escape from the crowd, heading back to Sora and Teru so they could make a clean getaway. 

“Don’t want to be on the news tonight?” she asked, spying the reporters hungrily eyeing you for a story. “Okay, fine, let’s go!” 

With Aika in the lead, you made your way through the crowd to head out of the parking lot. Reporters tried to stop you, rapidly firing questions your way, but Aika insisted she had to take you to a hospital right this second, and were they trying to compromise your health with these interview attempts? 

You had just gotten safely out of range and past the angrily grumbling reporters before Aika started gossiping. 

“I can’t believe you missed it! Naoki and Akira evacuated with us and they were talking with the fans until their manager came and pulled them away! Where were you anyways?” 

“I... hid in the bathroom,” you told her. 

“Oh okay,” she easily bought your lie. “I don’t know where Tsukiya was but having the other two there for a few minutes was great! Naoki said I should get a shirt like this with his name on it and-” 

What a relief. Aika was so excited that she had gotten to talk to members of her favorite band that she didn’t ask any more questions about your experience. You couldn’t even think about it right now without blushing anyways. 


End file.
